The Dinkeytown Murder: A Study of Violence, Media Response, and Immigrant Assimilation in Nineteenth-Century Minnesota

The Dinkytown Murder:
A Study of Violence, Media Response, and
Immigrant Assimilation in Nineteenth'
Century Minnesota
R o g e r M c k n i g h t
T h e M u r d e r
Tnis is the story of three ordinary immigrants from Sweden who
acted out extraordinary events in Minnesota. They called them
selves Gust (Wellson) Erickson, Frank Johnson, and Swan
Lindquist. All three arrived in Minneapolis during the 1870s and
found work as laborers. When those jobs failed, they hired out as
farmhands. Such inauspicious details did little to distinguish the three
Swedes from thousands of their fellow newcomers. As part of the
growing urban proletariat, they moved in and out of the city, obeying
the dictates of economic necessity. Yet they were too young to envi­sion
completely where their paths might lead. All that changed dras­tically
in the last week of January 1876. With resounding swiftness,
the events of those few fateful winter days left one of the three men
dead and changed the lives of the others irrevocably.
Gust Erickson, Frank Johnson, and Swan Lindquist had known
one another since their early days in Sweden. With time the relation­ship
between Erickson and Johnson grew troubled, and it worsened
after they reached Minnesota. In 1875, Erickson told Lindquist that
he intended to attack Johnson and steal his savings. Lindquist warned
Johnson of those plans. On January 24, 1876, Johnson arrived in
Farmer associate editor of the Quarterly, ROGER M C K N IG H T is a professor of
Swedish and Scandinavian studies at Gnstavus Adolphns College, St. Peter, Minne­sota.
He is the author of numerous articles on Stvedish America and a frequent con­tributor
to the Quarterly.
o ~ i
oo
Minneapolis. This photograph dates from before 1870. The East Bank, where Gust Erickson was killed, is in
the foreground. Courtesy of Hennepin History Museum, Minneapolis. Carl Larsson (28 May 1853-22
January 1919).
59
Minneapolis from his place of work nearby and joined his two coun­trymen.
hr addition to his savings, he carried a concealed knife.1
Three days of highly confused and confusing camaraderie fol­lowed.
Erickson, Johnson, and Lindquist played cards together, stopped
at downtown taverns, and paid calls on their friends.2 Acquaintances
and strangers alike saw them parading along the streets and boarding
city streetcars. Some said the three appeared hopelessly inebriated,
while others asserted they were only pretending to be drunk to at­tract
attention. The men spoke loudly in Swedish and broken En­glish.
On one streetcar their talk offended a lady, and they had to be
quieted. A streetcar driver overheard them arguing heatedly over
the favors of a young Swedish woman.3
At times the Swedes shook hands or embraced fondly, while
explaining to strangers that they were friends from the old country
only now being reunited after six years apart.4 At other moments
Erickson and Johnson turned sour and threatened each other. One
passenger watched as Johnson reached for his wallet, only to bare the
point of the six-inch hunting knife hidden under his coat. Not long
after that, Johnson reportedly told Erickson, “I’ll fix you.”5 Lindquist
variously acted as a go-between or distanced himself by dozing, or
pretending to doze, in the warmth of the moving streetcars.6
Their strange behavior reached its culmination on January 26, a
Tuesday. That evening the three boarded a tram in downtown Min­neapolis.
They rode across to the east bank of the Mississippi River
and switched to another car on the University line. As darkness fell,
they alighted at the University of Minnesota stop. There they stood
and talked. Then they trudged off into the night and crossed a darkened
field before arriving at a grove of trees in a frozen marshland.7
At Johnson’s suggestion, Lindquist walked ahead and out of sight.
Meanwhile Erickson fell twice in the snow. Johnson hesitated both
times but then helped him up. When Erickson fell a third time,
Johnson knelt down and without wanting pulled his knife. He slit
Erickson’s throat from ear to ear and then got up and walked away.
As Erickson yelled out in his death throes, Johnson went back to
deliver several more stab wounds.8 Erickson reached out to ward off
those thrusts, but Johnson hacked through the sleeves and stripped
flesh from his amis.9 Then all was quiet.
O n O
The comer of I 2* Avenue and Fifth Street SE today. In the 1870s this same area was an undeveloped marshland. By a small
stand of trees nearby, Gust Erickson met his death on 26 January 1876. Photo by the author.
61
Johnson flung his weapon to the ground and ran to rejoin Lindquist.
He announced: “He won’t kill me now. I got him killed, he is dead
already.”10 Johnson next led Lindquist back toward the streetcar stop.
Behind them they left Erickson’s still wann and bleeding body, Johnson’s
discarded knife, and their own footprints in the newly fallen snow.
Soon after the Swedish youths abandoned the scene, local au­thorities
and the Twin Cities press corps descended on it. Within
days, the murder of Gust Erickson developed into one of the greatest
media sensations of Minnesota’s early history. For the better part of a
year beginning on 28 January 1876, journalists across the state re­ferred
to Erickson’s death simply as The Murder.11 Needing no more
introduction, the public followed the case from day to day with a
never flagging interest. Indeed, the violence shocked state officials,
law enforcement officers, journalists, and ordinary citizens to an as­tounding
degree.
Against the background of the emotions aroused by the killing
itself and the considerable attention paid to it in the public arena,
the purpose of the present study is three-fold. The intention is to
trace the lives of the three humble Swedes involved in the events of
January 1876, to study the press coverage of the killing, and to
indicate the significance of the case to the Swedish-American immi­grant
experience in Minnesota and to the broader mainstream com­munity.
In short, was the story of Gust Erickson, Frank Johnson, and
Swan Lindquist an aberration in the otherwise conventional and
clearly outlined history of Swedish settlement in Minnesota? Or did
it, like the peeled skin of a proverbial onion, suggest to ethnic Swedes
the varied layers of adjustment and assimilation problems they faced
on the road to full acceptance in American society? And what role
did the media play in that process?
W h o W er e T h e y ?
A n attempt to explain Erickson’s death raises immediate ques­tions
regarding the three Swedish immigrants: Who were they? And
what were their lives like prior to January 1876? Erickson’s, Johnson’s,
and Lindquist’s names are, naturally, not to be found in Swedish
history books or in standard accounts of Swedish-American culture.
62
If not for the events of 1876, they would surely have lived out their
lives in the same obscurity with which they began them. Neverthe­less,
a good deal can be found about their origins. They had much in
common, including the fact that their identities in Sweden did not
fully match up with those they assumed in Minnesota.
The murdered man, Gust Erickson, came from a tiny farming
community in Skaraborg, Västergötland. His true name was Anders
Gustaf Eriksson. He was bom in October 1854, the third of five
children. His father owned a small one-quarter subdivided fami in
the parish of Bitterna. The boy’s childhood passed uneventfully. He
attended school for six years and was part of a confirmation class in
the Church of Sweden. As a teenager, he stayed with his family, even
as other youngsters began leaving home to find work.12 He grew to
be over six feet tall and had a thick head of white hair. His compan­ions
in Sweden knew nothing especially bad about him. They consid­ered
him good natured but careless of his possessions and money.13
His first move away from home came at eighteen, when he
emigrated. He had no discernible pressing reasons to leave Sweden.
His family did not suffer undue poverty and they had no relatives in
America. Most likely, he only followed along in the mounting tide of
young people looking for change. On 29 March 1872 he sailed from
Göteborg to New York and arrived in Minnesota on 28 April.14
From that point on, he exhibited extreme restlessness and suspicious
behavior. He stayed the summer of 1874 in Minneapolis, working for
a while as an assistant cook in a soup line, then moved to Milwau­kee,
where he found a job as a streetcar driver. By the spring of 1875,
he was back in Minnesota, but he soon quit work there and traveled
to New Orleans. In that city he signed on with a merchant vessel,
which took him back to Europe. His ship put into port in Göteborg,
but he had no chance to visit his parents in Bitterna.15
By the fall of 1875, he was in Minneapolis again. At that time he
began calling himself Gust Wellson, although his closest acquaintan­ces
still knew him as Erickson. He found temporary employment. In
between jobs, he roomed in boarding houses or moved in as a squat­ter
in condemned buildings. When his friends and several strangers
reported that money and valuables had been stolen from them, Min­neapolis
police quickly fingered Erickson as the culprit but lacked
63
sufficient evidence to arrest him. In late 1875, Erickson got a job as a
teamster. His employer praised him as a hard worker but noted that
Erickson began showing off sums of money that far exceeded his
earnings. The same employer described Erickson as the “associate
and companion of thieves and bad characters” and noted that he
bore the scars of frequent street fights.16
Toward the end of 1875, Erickson quit repotting for work, with­out
giving notice. His puzzled employer eventually ran into him on
the street and learned Erickson had been in jail in St. Paul for drunk­enness
and vagrancy. Erickson asked for his job back, but learned it
had been filled in his absence.17 By the time the New Year of 1876
dawned, Erickson had been in America for nearly four years and
succeeded in arousing the mistrust of the police, his former employ­ers,
and most of his acquaintances. The general consensus was re­flected
in the comment of a Swede who knew him in Minnesota. In
that man’s words, Gust Erickson was “a low down thief and robber.”18
It is unlikely anyone other than his parents knew Gust Erickson
better than Swan Lindquist . He was one of the few persons in America
who could tolerate Erickson’s behavior. Lindquist was also bom in
Bitterna in September 1853. His true Swedish name was Svante
Jonasson. He was the youngest of three sons. His father was described
as the “owner and cultivator” of the small, one-eighth subdivided
family fann. That holding was located only half a mile from Gustaf
Eriksson’s home place.19 As a result, Gustaf and Svante grew up close
to each other and attended the same school together in grades one
through six.20
Svante Jonasson’s childhood was not easy. His mother died in
1858, when he was five. He grew up working on his father’s fann, but
in 1870, when the boy was seventeen, the father also passed away.
Svante’s oldest brother, Anders Jonasson (bom in 1846) had de­parted
for America in 1868.21 That left only Svante and his brother
Johan (bom 1849) in Sweden. Svante took a farm job away from
home in 1870, but returned to Bitterna in mid-January 1872.22 Two
months later he and his brother Johan left. In the company of Gustaf
Eriksson, they sailed for America on 29 March, when Svante was still
only nineteen.23 For the two brothers emigration was a logical choice.
Having lost the farm after their father died, they faced an uncertain
64
Swan Lindquist, Stillwater State Prison inmate #656, clad in prison stripes. The scar
on Lindquist’s cheekbone was the result o f a workplace accident in Minneapolis, when
the wheels of a horse-drawn wagon rolled over his head. Though strong of build,
Lindquist was only 5'4" tall. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.
future in Sweden. In May 1872, they joined up with their brother
Anders in Minneapolis. It was at that time their names underwent a
sea change. Anders Jonasson had begun calling himself Andrew
Lindquist, and Svante and Johan followed suit. From 1872 onward
they were officially known in America as Swan and John Lindquist.24
Swan Lindquist made a good first impression on people. Though
under 5’7” in height, he was strong, energetic, and outgoing. His
facial features were also pleasing. He had brown hair, a fair complex-ion,
and blue gray eyes.25 With those appealing qualities he found
work almost immediately. His first job was on a farm, where he
received room and board and started school. He quit school after
only a month, however, when the other schoolboys, all Irish, chided
him mercilessly for not speaking English and bullied him for being
shorter than they.26
He then moved to Minneapolis, where he worked at two differ­ent
jobs as a delivery1 boy, perhaps under the influence of his brother
Andrew, who ran a downtown delivery and freight service. Swan
Lindquist’s reputation as a responsible worker grew steadily. One
employer stated that he perfomred his duties more intelligently than
any of the older men he had employed. Another attested that the
youth learned more English in a few months than other immigrants
could in five or six years.27 Lindquist himself was more modest. He
said he had learned to read Swedish well in the Bitterna school, but
wrote it poorly. He also stated that he spoke English haltingly and
had scarcely any reading knowledge of it.28
Swan Lindquist was accident-prone. He lost his second delivery
job when a cart turned over on top of him and nearly cmshed his
skull. He was cared for by two different doctors in Minneapolis, who
recognized his positive qualities and gave him work in their offices.
In the spring of 1875, Lindquist was well enough to leave for another
fann job, only to suffer a broken ann when he was kicked by a horse.
In the fall, he returned to recuperate from the accident at his brother
HENNEPIN AVENUE - AMNNEAP0U5
IN 1869
PENCE OPERA HOUSE
______________________ rH£-M£C,f6(MVI>M •_____________________
Heimepin Avenue in downtown Mirmeapolis in 1869. Swan Lindquist’s brother,
Andrew, arrived here from Sweden in 1868 and established his delivery and freight
service in the area in 1869. Courtesy of Heimepin History Museum, Minneapolis.
66
Frankjohnson, Stillwater State Prison inmate #655, in prison garb. Professor Winchel
identified Johnson by his "reddish face covered with freckles" and his "rather peculiar
lips and nose." Johnson stood just under 5 ’4" tall and weighed only 134 pounds.
Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.
Andrew’s home in Minneapolis.29 His fortunes gradually declined
after that. In unaccustomed idleness, he began drinking, wandering
the downtown streets, and spending most of the daylight hours at
Gust Erickson’s work place. In fact, Erickson’s employer suspected
that Lindquist’s frequent visits, which the employer interpreted as
loitering, led in part to Erickson’s suddenly abandoning his job and
taking to the streets. He even speculated that the two youths were
sharing stolen money.30
As 1876 began, Erickson and Lindquist were out of work. Their
only close acquaintance who had ready cash was Frank Johnson, the
last of the young men in the Bitterna group to leave Sweden. Frank
Johnson’s early life in that country had been essentially the same as
Erickson’s and Swan Lindquist’s, even though he was older than they.
Bom in October 1847 at the village of Grönhult, also in Skaraborg
län, he was the youngest of six children. His Swedish name was
Fredrik Johannesson. His father worked as a quartermaster or equip­
67
ment manager (rusthdllare) and, by the modest standards of the area,
was reasonably well off. While his siblings came to be famr owners or
married well, Fredrik followed the path of poorer boys by hiring out
as a famrhand. Between 1863 and 1870, he served at three different
farms before moving to Bitterna in 1871.31 There he came into close
contact with Gustaf Eriksson and Svante Jonasson. He also fell for a
neighborhood serving girl named Thilda Andersdotter.32
Fredrik Johannesson was easy to spot. He stood only 5’4” tall,
had bright red hair, bluish gray eyes, and a freckled, florid complex­ion.
33 From his earliest years, he was known to be timid and excep­tionally
thrifty, often carrying large sums of money with him. Not
surprisingly, he went in constant fear of being beaten and robbed. By
1872, his mother was dead, his father remarried, and Fredrik, now
twenty-five, was already outdistanced, both socially and financially,
by his older siblings. To escape th a t uncomfortable situation, he
sailed for America in April 1873 and arrived in New York on 6 May.
By 10 May he was in M in n e so ta .34 Five mon ths la te r T h ild a
Andersdotter also left Sweden and joined two of her sisters in Minne­apolis.
35 In 1873, Fredrik took the name Frank Johnson, while Thilda
came to be called Tilda Anderson.
Frank Johnson first went to work in St. Paul, but during the years
1874 and 1875 he switched to a job as a farmhand in nearby Hastings.36
He made frequent trips to Minneapolis to visit Tilda and to make the
rounds with Gust Erickson and the Lindquists. A sign of their friend­ship
occurred on 3 April 1875, when Gust Erickson, Swan Lindquist,
and Frank Johnson appeared together at City Hall in Minneapolis
and took out their first United States naturalization papers.37 Soon
afterward, Johnson convinced Lindquist to go to work at the Hastings
farm where Johnson was employed.
Swan Lindquist’s time in Hastings was short. He suffered the
aforementioned broken arm there and left. A t the same general time,
Erickson discovered Johnson’s risky habit of carrying cash in a pocket
under his work clothes. Without Lindquist’s protective hand, the
diminutive Johnson became an easy target. Erickson first assaulted
him on a bridge in Minneapolis. Later he appeared in Hastings and
attacked Johnson in the dark. Both robbery attempts were unsuccess­ful.
The third and most serious assault occurred in January 1876, also
68
at the Hastings farm. It began as Johnson went out to the stalls to
feed his horses just before dawn. Erickson jumped his victim from
high in the rafters behind him. He tried to strangle him and then rip
his coat off and take the money. Johnson stmggled free but was badly
injured and unable to talk or sleep for days thereafter.38 Soon after
the attack, Hastings police identified Erickson passing through town
on his way back to Minneapolis.39
Johnson recovered but remained mortally afraid. He took the
advice of a Hastings police officer and purchased a hunting knife at a
Hastings store for self-defense. A local man sharpened it for him. On
Sunday, 24 January, he left on the morning train for Minneapolis to
seek out Gust Erickson and come to terms with him. He told his
employer to expect him back by the evening of the same day. He did
not return until the following Wednesday.40
Ma n h u n t
On the afternoon of Wednesday, 27 January 1876, a local mer­chant
named George Andrews went for a walk just north of Fifth
Street Southeast in Minneapolis. After crossing a field, he came to a
marsh, located in what is now the heart of Dinkytown, a business,
entertainment, and residential area known to generations of Univer­sity
of Minnesota students as a popular gathering spot. In the 1870s,
the area was still an uninhabited, seldom-visited swamp. There Andrews
spotted a mutilated corpse lying just inside a fence. He quickly
notified authorities and before nightfall Minneapolis police and the
County Coroner were at the scene. After studying the evidence, they
were left with only three leads. They had an unidentified body, a
bloody knife, and the copious boot prints of three unknown men.41
Detective Michael Hoy and Coroner Peter O. Chilstrom studied
the dead man’s hair color and complexion and judged him to be a
Scandinavian. By the size of the boot prints, they saw one of the men
had large feet and guessed he was over six feet tall, which fit the
description of the body before them. The next day the coroner
removed the body to a funeral home and invited the public to view
it for identification purposes. Hundreds of curious townsfolk accepted
the invitation and filed past the corpse. Several of his fomrer employ-
Nicollet Avenue in downtown Minneapolis in 1870. Erickson, Johnson, and Littdquist boarded the streetcar
on Nicollet Avenue on the ill-fated evening o f 26 January 1876 and rode it across the Mississippi River to
the University of Minnesota stop. Courtesy of Hennepin History Museum, Minneapolis.
a\
so
70
ers immediately recognized the features of Gust Erickson. In Erickson’s
pocket, police found a Christmas and New Year’s greeting to his
parents in Sweden, which Erickson had written nearly a month earlier
but neglected to mail.42
The news spread quickly. Minneapolis was still a new and grow­ing
town, and street people like Erickson were easily recognized.
Reliable witnesses soon appeared. Those included streetcar drivers
and passengers alike, who remembered Erickson and his companions
and their numerous streetcar rides of the previous days. Some even
knew the men by name. One driver recalled how Swan Lindquist
and Johnson angrily accused Erickson of seducing Tilda Anderson as
Erickson’s way of further intimidating Johnson. This information led
police to the theory, which was to persist for years in the minds of
Minnesota Swedes from Bitterna, that the rivalry between Erickson
and Johnson sprang from a jealous love affair, not just from a money
issue. A fellow passenger from the previous Monday testified that
Erickson told him his companions were out to hurt him and hopped
off the streetcar in fear, only to board it again a few stops later. 43
The most prominent witness was the eminent Minnesota State
Geologist and university professor Horace N. Winchell. Professor
Winchell had been returning to his home near the University of
Minnesota on the same streetcar that carried the three Swedes on the
ill-fated Tuesday of 26 January. On that ride Winchell studied the
three carefully and even talked briefly with Erickson. He described
Erickson and Johnson in detail. 1 le gave a less careful description of
the youth who dozed in the seat in front of him. Nonetheless it
matched the appearance of Swan Lindquist. Two days later Michael
Hoy used that and other information to track down Lindquist, who
was innocently walking the downtown streets and had even visited
the funeral home to view Erickson’s body.44
Once in custody, Lindquist told Coroner Chilstrom the story of
the murder in Swedish and positively identified Frank Johnson as the
killer. As Michael Hoy placed Swan Lindquist behind bars, news
arrived from Johnson’s famt family in Hastings. Johnson had returned
there and asked his employer for back wages. In nervous agitation,
he told the employer’s wife it would not be safe for them if he stayed
at their farm any longer. Thinking Johnson had become mentally ill,
71
she agreed. Johnson said he intended to leave Minnesota to visit a
cousin in Illinois.45
On Thursday Johnson took the train from Hastings to St. Paul.
Michael Hoy caught wind of Johnson’s movements and went from
Minneapolis to St. Paul to intercept him, only to find that Johnson
had already left St. Paul for Minneapolis.46 At that point began a
feverish manhunt, which bore the hallmarks of a complicated farce
mixed with the panic-induced actions of a desperate flight. The
chase covered much of central and west central Minnesota.
With detectives hot on his trail, Frank Johnson went straight to
the Milwaukee Road Depot in Minneapolis. There an off-duty street­car
driver, who recognized him from the previous weekend, saw
Johnson boarding a westbound train, rather than heading for the spot
where police were lying in wait for him, that is, at the tracks leading
east to Chicago. Johnson rode west as far as die village of Kandiyohi,
in the heart of a major Swedish fanning settlement. He quietly checked
into a hotel there and listened with interest at a local store as cus­tomers
read aloud from florid newspaper accounts of the finding of
Erickson’s body. Johnson then contacted John Lindblad, a friend from
Bitterna, who lived near Kandiyohi. Lindblad took Johnson in. The
two men held a dance at Lindblad’s home that same evening. Johnson
entertained guests by playing the accordion and then retired to sleep
all night in a haystack.47
W h en villagers at the dance insistently inquired about the
newcomer’s identity, Lindblad decided to keep Johnson out of sight
at his farm. Johnson had helped pay for Lindblad and his wife to
emigrate from Sweden, and the bonds of loyalty between the three
were strong.48 O n Sunday a sheriff’s deputy appeared at Lindblad’s
door asking about Johnson, but Lindblad and his wife said the fugi­tive
was not there, when in reality he was hiding in the bant. Inexpli­cably,
the deputy left without searching the grounds. Though the
Kandiyohi County sheriff’s office had to report to Michael 1 loy in
embarrassment about their botched search, Johnson still felt pressure.
As a result, Swedish settlers bundled him in a covered carriage and
drove him to a hiding place in the woods. There he kept out of sight
in the daytime and slept by night in below-zero cold in the shelter of
fallen trees and piles of brush or inside a hollow log. Nighttime
72
George C.[I] Andrews was a prominent merchant in southeast Minneapolis. It was he
who discovered Gust Erickson's frozen body on 27 January 1876. [Note: There is
some confusion with Aitdrews’s middle initial. No George C. Andrews lived in the area
at the time. A George H. Andrews did.] From: Hiding in Plain Sight: Minneapolis’
First Neighborhood (Minneapolis, Minn.: Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Associa­tion,
no date), 68.
73
temperatures plunged to as low as -18" Fahrenheit.49
Under cover of darkness, other Swedish farmers crept into the
forest and gave Johnson food and water for several days, rather than
surrendering him to the authorities. Discovering the fanners’ actions,
John Gunderson, a Scandinavian pastor from the Twin Cities who
was holding religious meetings in Kandiyohi County, became in-censed
at their uncooperative attitude. Gunderson swore out a citizen’s
warrant against Johnson and contacted Minneapolis police, thus giv­ing
away Johnson’s whereabouts. Detective Hoy quickly boarded a
westbound freight train in Minneapolis and was met at the Kandiyohi
station by sheriff's officers with a fresh team of horses.50
His cover blown, Johnson struck out across country on foot.
Though he now lacked food and water, he zigzagged back and forth
and eluded his pursuers for fifteen miles before stopping in exhaus­tion
at the isolated cabin of a lone, aging Swedish pioneer named
Olof Ekdahl, who hid him and gave him his first sustenance in days.51
When Michael Hoy and his men at last caught the trail and entered
Ekdahl’s cabin, Johnson offered no resistance. The officers found him
calmly wanning his feet, which were badly frostbitten and had turned
blue up to the ankles.52
Believing he had a hardened butcher in custody, Hoy brought his
quarry7 back to Minneapolis by the first available afternoon train.
Even then complications arose. The police were surprised to leant
that a crowd of 2,000 people had gathered outside the Minneapolis
police station clamoring for a glimpse of the murderer. Hoy stopped
the train short of the depot and sneaked Johnson into the county jail
through a back door. Frank Johnson was immediately booked and
placed in a cell. He asked simply, “Where is Lindquist.2”53
In C u s t o d y
In the first week of Febniary, Frank Johnson and Swan Lindquist
were taken to Common Pleas Court in Minneapolis and formally
charged with murder. Johnson’s case seemed straightforward, since he
readily admitted to the crime, but Lindquist’s response presented a
more difficult problem. He contended that he took no part in the
killing and that Michael Hoy and Peter Chilstrom had promised him
74
immunity from prosecution if he told them all he knew about the
case. Lindquist claimed the Swedish 'American Chilstrom even prom­ised
to protect him, since Lindquist was a fellow Swede. When l loy
and Chilstrom denied those assertions, the court accepted their state­ments
and chose to deal with Johnson and Lindquist as equal part­ners
in the crime.54
Johnson told his story to officials. In order to avoid being killed,
he came up to Minneapolis on 24 January to have Erickson arrested
and put in jail. On the first day, a Sunday, he and Erickson kept a
guarded peace. As Johnsons stay in Minneapolis lengthened, the
drinking increased and his thoughts of an arrest faded. As a result, on
26 January another plan was hatched, that is, to get Erickson help­lessly
drunk and then attack him. When the three men left the last
streetcar on the fatal evening, they discussed whether to go to a
tavern or back to visit at Tilda Anderson’s house close by, where they
had spent the previous evening.55
Johnson chose a third path instead and led them across the open
field. Even then he said he was of two minds. He continually urged
Swan Lindquist, who was still nursing his broken ann, to stay out of
the way. He also began feeling sorry for Erickson, who could barely
stay on his feet. Then suddenly came the decisive moment and Frank
Johnson hesitated no longer. As he admitted, “We were walking
through some brush and I then made up my mind about killing
Erickson. I know that I did wrong to kill him but I thought I had to
save myself. Swan had no part in the killing.”56
If the confession eased his mind, it could not lessen his physical
pain. In mid-February physicians were called to the jail to amputate
most of Johnson’s frostbitten left foot. After the operation he fell
deathly ill and languished in silence for weeks. Not until early March
did he begin eating solid food again and talking to the Swedish­speaking
officer assigned to help him.57
On 9 March 1876, Johnson and Lindquist were at last arraigned
and given time to consider a plea.58 Unable to understand the En­glish
of the legal system, they now faced a new dilemma: How to
manage their case? Into the breach came the aggressive Minneapolis
law firm of Reynolds and Arctander to take up Lindquist’s defense
and give advice to Johnson. One of the partners was John W. Arctander.
75
Newton H. Winchell, Minnesota State Geologist and University of Minnesota profes­sor.
He observed Erickson, Johnson, and Lindquist cm the night of the murder aitd later
identified them to police. Courtesy of Hennepin History Museum, Minneapolis.
76
At first the prisoners surely saw him as a veritable godsend, since he
spoke Swedish. Indeed he appeared eminently capable of steering a
strong and steady course with the defendants through the unaccus­tomed
legal system.
John W. Arctander had a reputation and past experience as a
defender of the underdog. He was bom in Sweden in 1849, but grew
up in Norway. A precocious student, he graduated from Oslo Uni­versity
at age eighteen. For three years thereafter he worked in Oslo
with the great Norwegian poet and champion of liberty Björnstjerne
Björnson. Doing newspaper work, Arctander aided Björnson in the
struggle for Norwegian independence from that country’s unequal
and unpopular union with Sweden. In the late 1860s, Arctander’s
radical views led to conflicts with the conservative government. Those
disagreements caused him to leave Norway in 1870 in self-imposed
exile. For four years, beginning in 1870, he worked with Scandina-vian-
American newspapers in New York City while also studying law.
In 1874, he arrived in Minnesota and was admitted to the bar.59
By the time of the Erickson killing, Arctander had emerged as a
budding young tri-lingual defense lawyer with immense ambition.
Speaking Swedish, Arctander continued to have unique access to
both of the defendants. He expected Johnson to plead guilty to
murder. He also insisted that he could successfully defend Lindquist
on a plea of not guilty. Arctander stood by both men as they entered
their respective pleas of guilty and not guilty on 11 March. Lindquist’s
murder trial was set for 10 April, and Johnson’s sentencing was de­layed
until the completion of Lindquist’s trial.60
Despite its promising beginning, Arctander’s work with the Swedes
did not run smoothly. Lindquist especially began to wonder about his
counsel’s qualifications. First of all, the lawyer was barely older than
the two defendants themselves and had been in America only two or
three years longer than they. Then Arctander made the inexplicable
mistake of saying that Lindquist’s brother Andrew had hired him to
defend the case. Surprised, Andrew Lindquist answered that he had
never seen or heard of Arctander before the day the lawyer appeared
at the county jail and announced his role as defense counsel for Swan
Lindquist.61
Through March and early April, Arctander reassured his client.
77
Meanwhile the Hennepin County Attorney received the surprisingly
contradictory and puzzling message that both men had now decided
on pleas of not guilty.62 Arctander added to the confusion. He came
to the jail the day before Lindquist’s trial and, according to Swan
Lindquist, explained in excited tones that the State had “changed
the papers” on him suddenly and without warning. Both Johnson and
Lindquist must now plead guilty to second-degree murder, he in ­sisted,
in order to escape the certainty of a death penalty.63
The mention of capital punishment struck fear in the hearts of
both defendants. Johnson had earlier stated that he knew nothing at
all about possible punishments for murder in Minnesota.64 The talk
of hanging was a new concept to him and filled him with panic and
dread. Since he could not read or understand the court’s papers,
Lindquist in turn felt he had no choice but to follow Arctander’s
advice, especially since the attorney now explained that he could get
Lindquist released from prison in six to twelve months with a guilty
plea. Lindquist’s last-minute request to change his plea to guilty was
granted by the judge.65
T he Hennepin County Attorney, who said he knew nothing
about the changing of papers, had prepared for a thorough trial and
was astounded at the new guilty plea. He visited Johnson and Lindquist
in jail before the time set for the trial and tried to reason with them
that a trial was their only chance of seeing justice done, but he could
not overcome their profound fear of death on the gallows. Only
reluctantly did he listen in court the next day as both men were
sentenced to life in prison.66 No trial was held for either defendant.
After waiting over two months in the county jail, the two Swedes
stood in Common Pleas Court on 11 April 1876 and listened as their
fates were sealed.
On 12 April the Hennepin County sheriff delivered Frank Johnson
and Swan Lindquist to Stillwater State Prison. After being checked
in, they were taken to the cellblocks. As they entered their 5’ x 7’
cells, the two felt differing emotions. Frank Johnson, now commonly
known statewide as Johnson the Murderer, accepted his fate and was
thankful to escape hanging. Still, he was visibly shaken. Lindquist,
though likely not fully as ignorant of knowledge about the killing as
he wished the public to believe, continued to say he was innocent of
78
John W. Arctander was Scandinavian bom. A prominent Minnesota attorney and
noted defender of the underdog, he served as defense counsel for S u m Lindquist.
From: Marion D. Shutter and J . S. McLain, editors. Progressive Men of Minne­sota...
(The Minneapolis Journal, Minneapolis, Minn., 1897), 219.
79
murder. He had begun to wonder about the workings of the Law. He
was fast becoming convinced he bad been lied to and badly repre­sented
by the Minneapolis police detective, the County Coroner,
and now his defense counsel. Despite those differences in attitude,
the two men’s sentences were equally final. The State had spoken,
and it intended for Stillwater State Prison to be their home for as
long as they might live.
Me d ia C o v e r a g e
A St. Paul journalist followed the two convicts to Stillwater and
described their introduction to prison life. According to the reporter,
Johnson took his place meekly. It was noticeable that his movement
was limited because the impaired “left leg [was turned] at a right
angle backwards.” Without realizing the nature of his plight, Lindquist
gazed about at his cell “in a vacant, ignorant manner” and nonchalantly
asked a guard for some tobacco. He commented, strangely, that he
had forgotten his own tobacco along with his Bible. The reporter
sarcastically promised readers that the public was now safe. Prison
gates would never open for the two inmates again.0'
The highly judgmental tone of such comments was typical of the
press coverage of the Erickson murder.68 Reporters’ views proved to
be as changeable as they were opinionated. In the early stages of the
police investigation, the graphic newspaper descriptions of the crime
scene were intended tmly to shock the entire state, to a degree that
present-day readers could only find distasteful. It was clear that edi­tors
allowed the violence to be reported in tenns even more garish
than reality would support. Rather than just a murder, this was a
beastly slaughter. Reporters described it as “the fiendish crime,” “the
barbarous butcheries,” and “the literal butchery of a human being.”69
Caught up in the rhetorical frenzy of the English-language press, the
German-American Minneapolis Freie Presse even coined the term
“butcherei” (butchery) to describe the killing.70 Overstated though
such terminology was, it nevertheless brought home the fact that the
crime was bmtal by any standards.
Before Johnson’s and Lindquist’s names were known to the pub­lic,
writers conjured up images of the killers as unimaginable mon­
80
sters. They were conceptualized as “cold-blooded villains,” “fiends in
human shape,” and “human blood hounds.”71 Once Swan Lindquist
was arrested, reporters were clearly surprised, however, to find him a
hamtless-looking youth of only twenty-two “with a very slight and
downy mustache.” Instead, they then imagined his yet-unknown part­ner
as the unspeakable specter. Even though he left tiny footprints in
the snow, the killer must nonetheless be a “merciless butcher,” “a
bloodthirsty wretch,” “a guilty wretch,” or “a thorough coward.”72
T he killers were described, in short, as unsalvageable brutes.
Later, however, the chance to observe the throngs gathered to see
the murderer in handcuffs offered newspapermen an ideal opportu­nity
to add nuances to their pointed descriptions. In judicious temrs,
reporters noticed the absence of a lynch mentality among the masses.
Rather than ntffians, the citizens who gathered on the streets were in
a festive and curious mood and respectfully waited for justice to take
its due course.73
There a contradiction arose. If indeed any bloodlust appeared, it
was in the columns of the newspapers themselves. Even as journalists
praised a patient reliance on the scales of justice, they could not
resist expressing a desire for swift retribution. During the early stages
of the search, the St. Paul Daily Pioneer Press complained that “the law
shields them [murderers] from the gallows.” In that same vein, the
tme sentiments of Minneapolis’s The Daily Evening Mail could hardly
have been misunderstood when it wrote about the murderer: “When
he does arrive the citizens of this city should give him a warm recep­tion.”
Once Johnson and Lindquist were both in custody, another
reporter observed them at close hand and noted, with an undisguised
sense of glee, that “both of the villains seemed filled with a whole­some
fear of hanging.” There was every reason to assume the guilty
parties would be brought to “the gallows which claims them as its
own.” And before Johnson was even indicted, a writer for the The
Daily Evening Mail described him as “one of the worst criminals ever
left unhung [sic].”74
Once Johnson was caught and could be questioned, reporters
had difficulty reconciling the hyperbole of their previous reports with
the sight of the contrite and sorrowful soul he presented. One writer
admitted as much: “He [Johnson] is rather below the medium stature,
81
sandy complexion, not remarkably intelligent, and has a sharp, cold
gray eye. Yet he wouldn’t be singled out among a thousand as a
murderer.”75
During the following two months a noticeable shift in attitudes
occurred. In February, reporters followed Johnson’s amputation and
the resultant life-threatening illness and despondency he suffered with
intense interest, even sympathy. They described his chagrin, embar­rassment,
and agitation when throngs of street urchins and general
rabble as well as noisome, unshaven, and unemployed workers—in
addition to others known condescendingly as “the Scandinavian ele­ment”—
frantically pushed, shoved, elbowed, and even barged their
way into his and Lindquist’s courtroom hearings. Policemen struggled
in vain to hold them in check.76 Reporters were touched to see how,
in his infirmity, officers had to carry Frank Johnson into the court­room
in a blanket. It was equally touching to observe how the judge
allowed him to enter his guilty plea from a sitting position, after he
tried but failed to stand up and answer to charges.77
Seemingly against their will, journalists came to see the killer, in
brief, as a man of feeling. In March writers from the Minneapolis
Journal and the St. Paul Daily Pioneer Press came to interview Johnson
in his jail cell and found him quietly reading and discussing the New
Testament, while a group of pretty girls from a church sang hymns for
him. Fie said he had felt bad since the moment of the killing and
added in broken English: “What could I do or where could I go? I
feel badder now than I ever do.” Fie admitted his lowest moment
had come when he tried to act happy while playing music at the
dance in Kandiyohi.78 In a matter of weeks, Johnson had gone from
being viewed as a devil who defied the Law, in the fomr of Detective
Fioy, and tried to outwit th e gospel, as represented by Pastor
Gunderson, to a man of sensibility, who could carry on a coherent
and civilized conversation.79
By early March reporters had decided Lindquist was the true
villain, one of almost Byzantine proportions, and Johnson only his
unwitting tool. Johnson was indeed the perpetrator but Lindquist the
instigator of the killing. They theorized that Lindquist owed money
to Erickson and so played Johnson and Erickson off against each
other, hoping that through Erickson’s assaults on Johnson he could
82
MURDER MOST FOUL
An Unknown Man Literally Butchered within a short
distance of Isaac McNair’s Residence
His Mutilated Remains Discovered Yesterday by George H. Andrews
St. Paul Daily Pioneer Press
28 January 1876
THAT HORRIBLE MURDER
The Body Identified as That of “Gus Erickson”
A Thief and a Bummer, but Nevertheless a Human Being
St. Paul Pioneer Press
28 January 1876
WELLSON’S MURDER
New and Startling Facts Concern It
Lindquist Confesses His Participation in the Crime
Tells How Johnson, with Premeditation Committed It
The Daily Evening Mail
29 January 1876
SWIFT RETRIBUTION
Overtakes the Murderer Johnson,
After a Two days Skulk in the Woods
Minneapolis Officers Chase Him
Fifteen Miles and Run Him Down
The Daily Evening Mail
3 February 1876
THE MURDERERS
Both of the Murderers Interviewed
The First Statement that Lindquist Has Made Public
He Says that He is Perfectly Innocent and that Hoy and Chilstrom
Offered Him Inducements
And Promised to Clear Him if He Would Tell All He Knew
The Daily Evening Mail
4 February 1876
83
lay hands on Johnson’s money and thereby repay his debt to Erickson.
When that ploy failed, Lindquist, it was decided, planned to have
Johnson murder Erickson. According to that explanation, it was
Lindquist who invented the scheme for Johnson to get Erickson
drunk and then isolate him in a spot where die murder could be
carried out undisturbed. In that way Lindquist could eliminate both
Erickson and Lindquist’s debt to Erickson for good. One newspaper
concluded that Lindquist was more guilty than Johnson, “who would
scarcely have slaughtered his man but for the fiend’s [Lindquist’s]
advice and assistance.”80
At each subsequent court appearance, reporters came increas­ingly
to feel the countenances of the accused men reflected their
inner characters. Johnson showed remorse. “It was impossible to dis­cern
a trace of viciousness in his appearance or conversation,” wrote
one journalist 81 In contrast, Lindquist appeared in court gaudily
dressed in green and brown plaid pants and a red shirt, while turning
a quid of tobacco in his mouth before spitting it out. I le had ex­tremely
dirty hands. Rather than the winning appearance noted by
his early employers, he had a “repulsive and brazen expression in the
eyes, and a coarse mouth.”82 One journalist described him as being
as “expressionless as a side of beef’ and wondered that one so young
could be so hardened in crime.83 Lindquist seemed indifferent to the
gaze of the packed courtroom and smiled distractedly at lawyers’
comments. In reporters’ views, Swan Lindquist was either completely
unaware of the seriousness of the charges against him or supremely
and unwisely confident he could beat them.84
By mid-March differences between the defendants were fully de­lineated,
in the eyes of reporters. Lindquist remained stolid and indif­ferent,
while Johnson had “the more conscience of the two” and the
full sympathy of the spectators in court. Even at their sentencing
Johnson “manifested considerable feeling,” but Lindquist’s face was
said to remain cold and expressionless.85 Differences also appeared at
various times when the two men were allowed to meet and converse
in the county jail. Reporters noted then that Lindquist turned away
from the milder mannered Johnson and either refused to address him
or turned again to face him and initiated a round of bitter accusa­tions
between them.86
84
Journalists were nothing if not inconsistent. Lingering always in
the back of their minds was the feeling that Johnson and Lindquist
both were malicious, even as the reporters could be in the process of
shifting opinions back and forth in favor of one defendant over the
other. The suspicions of shared evil were reinforced when an anony­mous
Swede in Minnesota told a reporter the following curious tale:
A gentleman from Sweden, who is well acquainted with
the characteristics of the people inhabiting that portion of
Sweden from whence came Erickson and his murderers,
Johnson and Lindquist, tells us that the neighborhood where
all three of them grew up is noted for its bloodthirstiness, and
that stabbing, throat-cutting and similar amusements are fre­quently
enjoyed by a crowd, who think it no more harm to
stand by and see one man cut the jugular of another than it
would be to witness the animal Christmas hog-killing. Reared
in a locality like this, no wonder Lindquist stood by and saw
Johnson almost sever the head of Erickson. Doubtless he
thought there was little or no crime in his being present.87
Whether the newspaper’s editor passed such information on to
readers in good faith or blatantly published it in the interests of
sensationalism, it was a provocative report that demanded close scmtiny
and some investigative reporting. Unfortunately, both were lacking,
and the report was allowed to stand unquestioned.
The most straightforward present-day response to the published
item is that the parts of Skaraborg the three Swedes came from were
quiet fanning communities whose inhabitants in general would have
been as shocked in 1876 by the Erickson murder as were the people
of Minnesota. Until the last decades of the nineteenth century, how­ever,
there existed a common and controversial custom of knife
fighting {knivslagsmdl) in parts of southwestern Sweden, to which the
informant was likely referring. It may have grown from the habit of
village fights, in which youths from different settlements in Sweden
engaged in fistfights. By lighting, each group attempted to establish
its villages supposed superiority over rival villages.
Ritualized knife fighting roughly paralleled the village fighting
85
custom. Alcohol consumption was a common element in the con­frontations.
Knife fighting could be between groups, or it might result
from individual or family vendettas. Some attacks were ambushes on
roadways against travelers. Turning out lights in a room or a drinking
establishment and cutting an adversary under the cover of darkness
was a common ploy. Otherwise it was not unknown for men to fight
one-on-one with drawn knives. Often the blades were ground down
to only an inch or less in length. So the purpose was not to kill but to
mark one’s opponent permanently with a knife scar from chin to ear.
Men who were unlucky in such fights bore the so-called Frillesås-scar
(Frillesåsmärket) on their faces or necks for life.88 Such struggles brought
dangerous weapons into play and could be hotly contested. They
might also be witnessed by large groups of rowdy spectators or acted
out in private.
In such settings serious injuries or even deaths could occur. De­spite
that fact, there was no question of sanctioned murder, as sug­gested
by the Minnesota newspaper’s informant. Combatants were
indeed commonly taken to court and punished under Swedish law
for their offenses. Some men avoided the courts by escaping to
America, while others were marked by the victims’ friends or family
members in retaliation.89 To this day there is disagreement among
folklorists and historians about the extent arid frequency of knife
fighting customs in various Swedish provinces, but it is clear that
knife fighting was common in southwestern Sweden, including parts
of Västergötland.90 Where it existed, it would often have been prac­ticed
by younger men or known troublemakers.
In directly associating knife fighting traditions with Frank Johnson’s
method of killing Gust Erickson, the informant and the newspaper
were incautious. The difficulty in making such a connection would
arise in ascertaining how much, if anything, Johnson knew about
knife fighting and what his thoughts were as he knifed Erickson to
death. The Minneapolis newspaper made no attempt to verify the
accuracy of its informant’s statement or to question Johnson and
Lindquist in jail about their familiarity with knife fighting traditions
in Sweden. Instead of a shortened blade, Frank Johnson carried a
long razor sharp hunting knife in 1876, and all indications were that
he intended not to mark and scar Erickson for life but to end his life
86
once and for all. There appeared to be no ritual involved, only a
swift, deadly, and definitive attack. Nonetheless, to some Swedes in
Minnesota the fact that Johnson attacked Gust Erickson in the dark
and cut him across the throat from ear to ear may have been remind-ful
of knife fighting customs the immigrants knew from Sweden. That
Johnson started to leave after cutting Erickson but then turned and
came back to the scene of the crime might also have reminded
native Swedes of the tendency among some knife fighters of return­ing
to inspect the injury they had inflicted on their adversaries.
The American journalists failed to delve into Swedish practices.
Their lack of critical thinking in presenting such a story paralleled
further variances in reporting on the Erickson murder. At times Johnson
and Lindquist could be classified as calculating, individualistic, and
cold-blooded killers. A t other times they were seen as socially condi­tioned
products of a brutal environment. Did they act out of their
own unbridled volition? Or were they, in a way they had little control
over, socially predisposed to violence by the stmcture of the society
in which they grew up? Naturally, those and other explanations of
the factors that motivated them conflicted with one another. That
conflict persisted in the pages of newspapers throughout die period of
the legal investigation into the case. Against that background an­other
daily paper wondered, in raw temis, if it was at all possible for
attorneys to build a justifiable case in the Swedes’ defense:
Lindquist, the murderer Johnson’s “audience” at the time
he cut the throat of Erickson, is to be defended by Arctander
and Reynolds, who it is needless to say will do their best to
save the fellow’s neck. W h e th e r the circumstances that
Lindquist comes from, that wild section of Sweden where it is
not considered a crime to stand by and see a man kill an­other,
is [sic] to be of service in his case, remains to be seen.91
Such colorful descriptions were plentiful in the press, but dispassion­ate
analysis remained rare. Confusion grew.
By the time Johnson and Lindquist entered their pleas, the press
had created an impenetrable jumble of exaggerated and contradic­tory
claims that defied all attempts by the general public to make art
87
objective evaluation of the mentality and motivation of the two
Swedes. What were they: Hardened, nihilistic offenders? Automatons
conditioned to violence? Or simply disoriented immigrants?
Certainly, the suggestion that they may have been young, way­ward
single men isolated irom family, social, or church groups and
influenced by bad company was never considered by the popular
press. By the time Johnson and Lindquist were delivered to the State
Prison in mid-April, newspapers surrendered their attempts at a thor­ough
and satisfactory explanation and took the path of least resis­tance.
They relegated the Swedes once more to equal status as “the
human butchers,” capable only of creating chaos and causing moral
outrage.92 In that view, the people of Minnesota were well rid of
them.
As with all sensational media events, the furor created by The
Murder subsided with time. With Johnson and Lindquist reduced to
faceless numbers in the Stillwater convict population after 1876,
reporters moved on to other topics. In 1907, when a Minneapolis
Tribune staff member contacted the Stillwater Prison warden and
blithely asked for an interview with the oldest convict at the peniten­tiary,
it was clear nobody in the Twin Cities newspaper world had any
memory of the Erickson murder and its perpetrator(s). The reporter
received only lukewami encouragement from the warden and did
not follow up on the assignment.93 As early as March 1876, however,
one Minneapolis daily had predicted that details of the case would
not quickly die in the minds of the public.94 That opinion was to
prove at least partly prophetic.
T h e ir Fa t e s
The story of the three Swedish immigrants did not end when
Stillwater’s prison gates closed on Frank Johnson and Swan Lindquist.
For years their fate continued to reverberate poignantly—among
those who were still listening—with controversy, resignation, and
defeat, and a brave struggle for self-realization.
In a bizarre turn of events, Gust Erickson fared as badly in death
as he had in life. After he died, Minneapolis authorities reviewed his
record. He had no relatives in America and at the time of death
lacked employment and a permanent residence. As a result, the city
declared Erickson a pauper and looked for economical ways to fi­nance
his burial. Only a few options were open.
In mid-February the body was taken from the funeral home
where it had been identified earlier to historic Layman’s Cemetery in
the heart of south Minneapolis’s strongest Scandinavian neighbor­hood.
The cemetery’s proprietor, Martin Layman, who claimed he
had been a friend of Erickson, offered to bury him. Before that could
be done, however, the Coroner’s Office sold Erickson’s body to the
University of Minnesota medical school, whose students immediately
set about dissecting the cadaver. The medical school eventually sent
a box containing Erickson’s dissected remains back to Layman.
Layman was shocked to find the box held only Erickson’s clothes
cut into pieces, a pail containing his internal organs, and numerous
strips of his flesh and other body parts. The medical students also put
the bodies of two cats in the container along with the human re­mains.
They had tied the cats’ legs together and killed them by
cutting their throats from ear to ear in a grotesque imitation of
Johnson’s murder of Erickson.95 Erickson’s remains were interred by
the City of Minneapolis a month after his death, but only, as one
reporter commented, “after having been re-murdered and rehashed
by a party of medical students.”96
The questionable treatment of Erickson’s remains sparked a lively
debate in the press over the rights of the dead. The arguments
ranged from angry charges of body snatching to enlightened discus­sions
of the relative need for post-mortem examinations in order to
further scientific research. Under threat of a lawsuit, officials finally
disinterred Erickson’s remains and removed the offensive items from
the casket. Wha t little was left of Gust Erickson was at last re­buried.
9' There was no word about how his family in Sweden learned
of Gust Erickson’s death. In the end, Coroner Chilstrom suffered the
greatest opprobrium. He exited the Erickson case in late March 1876
under charges that he kept for his own purposes the money earned
from the sale of Erickson’s body.98
The controversy surrounding the mental makeup of Erickson’s
murderer ceased after Frank Johnson entered Stillwater Prison. De­spite
his truncated foot, Johnson eventually became physically fit and
89
able to work regularly in the prison shops. His mental state deterio-rated
rapidly, on the other hand. The journalists’ not altogether inac­curate
pre-sentencing portrait of Johnson as a civil man of co n ­science
gave way in prison to the sad and irreversible image of a
convict with no hope, no opinions, and nobody to live for. Tha t
tendency began early in his prison career and worsened steadily.
One warden even expressed the opinion that Johnson had always
been weak of mind, that is, from birth."
Through the rest of the 1870s, Johnson was wracked with guilt.
He maintained that Swan Lindquist was innocent of any crime and
blamed himself for Lindquist’s incarceration. That attitude caused
prison officials to wonder even more about Johnson’s fragile mental
state. Their concern heightened in 1880, when a Minneapolis attor­ney
interviewed Johnson in prison concerning Lindquist’s role in the
murder. Johnson gave a calm, sensible report of the happenings of
1876, but when asked a few days later to verify his statements he was
too troubled to do so. The attorney wrote:
He [Frank Johnson] brooded over these things so much
and became so despondent that he imagined he was going to
be hung [sic] because he was guilty. It required the strongest
assurances to the contrary and the utmost endeavors of the
officers and chaplain to keep him from entirely losing his
m in d .100
As the years crept by, Johnson grew more deranged and his
irrational fear of hanging increased. In the early 1900s, the warden’s
office reported that he told the same “remarkable story” of his past in
Minneapolis over and over again year after year, even to staff who
had no recollection of his crime.101
While his mind failed, a few friends stood by him. John Lindblad
of Kandiyohi visited him at the prison in the early years and wrote
letters occasionally. Lindblad remained firm in the belief that Johnson
killed Erickson in self-defense because of a quarrel over Tilda Ander­son
and money. Lie unsuccessfully circulated petitions for Johnson to
be pardoned, but by 1900 Lindblad stopped visiting him and ended
their contact, for unexplained reasons. Johnson’s siblings in Skaraborg
90
wrote to him until they passed away. By 1920, only an aged sister was
left in Sweden.102
To the world at large Johnson was a forgotten man. After the
World War I era, the State Board of Control considered him for
parole several times. The Board decided on each occasion that he
would be harmless in civilian life. However, he would likely be un­able
to support himself. One Board member wrote that he was “of
the type that does not live, simply exists.” In conclusion, the Board
reported that Johnson did not want to leave the institution and freely
said so. The prison was his only home. He had no desire to start
anew.103
In 1917, the Stillwater prison physician wrote of Johnson: “He is,
to all practicable purposes, insane.” He had two nephews in South
Dakota. Wh en asked if he wished to see them, Johnson replied
indifferently that he would not know a relative from any other stranger.
In 1923, the prison physician reported again: “He cannot give a
rational account of himself or any of his relatives.”104
In that state, Frank Johnson watched the decades pass by. He sat
alone in his cell reading Swedish-American newspapers.105 He surely
appeared as a curiosity to the younger inmates and new staff alike. By
1920, no one at the prison, either employee or prisoner, had been on
the scene when he arrived there over forty years earlier. Many who
had been present were now long since deceased. Nor did any mem­bers
of the Board of Control have first-hand memories of the crime
he had committed. He remained a docile inmate, who asked n o th ­ing,
wanted nothing, and gave nothing. He had lost everything—his
family, his acquaintances, his girlfriend, his freedom, and his dignity.
He entertained no illusions about getting them back. His dreams
were dead.
Frank Johnson grew up on a farm and lived for twenty-five years
in Sweden, spent three years in Minnesota, and then entered into a
state of limbo. In 1876, he told his jailers in Minneapolis that he had
no will to live any longer.106 After that he spent the better part of
five decades in prison waiting to die. In 1922, he grew weak and was
sent to the prison hospital, where he spent nearly a year. He died
there quietly on 30 May 1923. Through the warden’s office his sur­viving
sister in Sweden, now over eighty, had been notified earlier of
91
his illness, but she did not reply.107
His nephews in South Dakota told the prison warden to bury
Frank in Stillwater. They were too busy to help with final arrange­ments
or to attend the funeral, but they asked how they could obtain
the money their uncle had accumulated in his prison earnings ac­count.
The warden answered only that the inmate was given a re­spectful
Christian burial. Johnson’s funds were turned over to the
probate court.108 The only expression of sorrow came in a letter from
the now seventy-eight-year-old John Lindblad, who wrote of Johnson’s
helpful nature as a young man and repeated his belief that Johnson
killed Gust Erickson in self-defense. Lindblad had trouble hiding his
feeling that Erickson got what he deserved in 1876.109
Frank Johnson died after forty-six years, one month, and eigh­teen
days at Stillw-ater State Prison. His time there still stands as the
longest sentence ever served in the Minnesota prison system, a dubi­ous
distinction.110
The only happy ending to this story belonged to Swan Lindquist.
As with Frank Johnson, Lindquist’s reputation changed in prison
from that spread about him in the media before his incarceration.
Fortunately for Lindquist, his image improved with time. Instead of
keeping the vacant, ignorant look attributed to him as he entered his
cellblock in 1876, Lindquist immediately made an intelligent deci­sion.
He chose to forget his anger at being deceived by the authori­ties
and adopted a positive approach to prison life. He was deter­mined
to start afresh. Tha t attitude required great courage, but it
helped to save him.
Lindquist became a paint stripper and decorator in the prison
industries and learned the trade well. T h a t was facilitated by the
encouragement of his guards, who believed he was innocent of mur­der
and expected his stay at Stillwater to be short. Lindquist also
made a concerted effort to leam English. He read nearly two h u n ­dred
books from the prison library.111 Beginning in the late 1870s he
used his new-found English language skills to argue his case with
State officials. In 1880, numerous citizens of Minneapolis joined his
cause. Lindquist’s fomrer employers wrote letters attesting to his su­perior
work record, his honesty, and his high intelligence. His super­visors
at the prison also praised his industry and reliability at work.112
92
In 1882, fifty-seven Swedish-American men in Minneapolis signed a
petition requesting a pardon for Lindquist.113 Those efforts led a Twin
Cities law firm to reopen his case. Those who knew him before
prison blamed bad company for his trouble and believed he could be
relied on to avoid such companions in the future.
In 1881, Governor J. S. Pillsbury denied the first request for a
pardon for Lindquist. Pillsbury was noted for his hard line on crime
and offenders. He granted few pardons and made even fewer conces­sions
on social issues. Still, those working for Lindquist did not give
up. In 1882, the testimonials gathered by the law finn ended up on
the desk of Pillsbury’s successor, Governor L. L. Hubbard. Hubbard
looked favorably on the 1882 petition and commuted Lindquist’s
sentence to ten years. With credit for good conduct, his time was
reduced to eight years. Lindquist left Stillwater Prison without fanfare
on 16 August 1884.1,4
On his own behalf, he had said, while still behind bars: “If I can
have my freedom, I will live a steady, honest and useful life, and be a
man. I was nothing but a boy when I came here.”115 Swan Lindquist
lived up to that promise. He returned to Minneapolis and joined his
brother Andrew’s express delivery' service, which they ran together
successfully for thirty-five years. In 1885, Swart Lindquist married a
Norwegian immigrant woman. They had four children. Swan retired
from business in 1920 and passed away on 9 March 1936, at age
eighty-two.116
He lived out his life in the heart of the Scandinavian neighbor­hood
on the West Bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.117
From his home he had a view across to the East Bank, in the direc­tion
of the University of Minnesota and Dinkytown, where his sober­ing
encounter with the Law began so many years before. He had time
to think back on those events. A t his death the murder of Gust
Erickson was sixty years in the past and his own release from prison a
fifty-two-year-old memory. The marshland where Gust Erickson met
his death was now a residential neighborhood. By sheer dint of per­sonal
initiative, responsible behavior, and the help of right-minded
citizens, Swan Lindquist beat the odds and lived a productive life.
There is no record that he had any contact with Frank Johnson after
he left Stillwater Prison.
93
Others who were involved in events surrounding the Erickson
murder got on with their lives in various ways after 1876. Detective
Michael Hoy built a colorful career in police work. In 1873, he
became Minneapolis’s first and only detective. His controversial pur­suit
of Frank Johnson in 1876' was done without budgetary support
from the City and went beyond Hoy’s legal jurisdiction. Similar dar­ing
moves in later years made him a favorite of journalists but caused
further controversy and difficulties for Hoy with government officials.
Nonetheless, he rose to be chief of police and chief of detectives in
Minneapolis. lit 1887, he became a member of Minnesota’s Board of
Police Commissioners.118
The public service career of Coroner Peter O. Chilstrom was
short. Charges that he kept funds from the sale of Gust Erickson’s
body were never proven, but he soon left the coroner’s position.
Thereafter he worked as an attorney in Minneapolis until 1880,
whereupon his name faded from the records.119
John W. Arctander continued his law practice and became promi­nent
in the Minnesota legal community. He served on an important
committee that finalized the Minnesota law code. Arctander trans­lated
the law code to Norwegian and Swedish and published both
translations for the aid of Scandinavian immigrants. He served in
numerous important statewide legal posts. Later in life he also gained
recognition as a novelist. 11 is name as a defender of the underdog did
not extend far beyond Swan Lindquist’s sentencing, however. Despite
his earlier promises to get Lindquist released from his sentence, he
abandoned Lindquist’s cause swiftly and had no contact with his
client in prison. Neither did he play any role in the drive to have
Lindquist pardoned. Arctander later moved to Seattle and died there
in 1920.120
Andrew Lindquist remained in Minneapolis. Like Swan Lindquist,
he married a Norwegian immigrant woman and had a family. He
died itt 1924.121
Tilda Anderson stayed in Minneapolis and worked as a domestic
servant until the early 1880s, after which time she faded from the
official records. There is no indication that she had any contact with
Frank Johnson after his arrest and conviction.122
94
C o n c l u s io n
The Erickson murder was an exceptional case of abuse, fear,
misunderstanding, and violence. It was complicated by underlying
conflicts and uncertainties in the Swedish immigrant experience. In
their aftermath, those troubles offered the Swedish-American com­munity
and greater Minnesota ample food for thought.
Several aspects of the Erickson case invite discussion. One is the
immigrants’ state of uprootedness. There can be no doubt that Gust
Erickson, Frank Johnson, and Swan Lindquist were adrift in a foreign
culture in the mid-1870s. In Minnesota they had relatives or friends
and acquaintances from home. There were shared customs and memo­ries
from their native province to fall back on. Those facts did little,
however, to cushion them from the challenges involved in confront­ing
American culture.
Problems of some magnitude arose, which Erickson, Johnson,
and Lindquist lacked the previous cultural exposure and educational
background to deal with. Their experiences illustrated the difficul­ties.
Before immigration, they had spent their lives in small mono-cultural
mral settlements that exerted strict controls over individual
behavior. Every action of each individual in Bitterna, which con­sisted
of only a couple hundred farmsteads, would have taken place
under the watchful eye of family, neighbors, and parish pastors.
As arms of the Swedish government, clergymen in the State
Church were required to make regular I Iousehold Examinations and
record the spiritual and secular state of each parish resident. Parishio­ners
often resented such visits as an invasion of privacy. Yet the
examinations effectively created a record of each person’s habits
through the years, which local officials kept close tabs on. All of­fenses,
major or minor, were duly recorded and used to judge indi­vidual
behavior.123
In addition, the rural community in Sweden was a conformist
society. Youth were expected to follow in the footsteps of their par­ents
and older siblings. Social mobility was restricted. Individuals
worked alongside, had children with, and married others of their own
social class. Controls over social behavior patterns were, therefore,
often peer-related. Being nonconformist meant living outside the
95
collective experience, a chancy proposition at best. Farmland was
marginal and job opportunities limited in rural areas. Thus reliance
on and cooperation with the local parish group was essential to
survival. Ideas of rugged individualism and self-help, so common in
England and America at the time, were foreign concepts to rural
Swedish working people.
The group cared for and nurtured individuals. Even if Frank
Johnson was more mentally challenged than his siblings, the commu­nity
had a place for him. Likewise, Gust Erickson’s wayward tenden­cies
could be held in check by the constant observation of local
people, n o t the least of whom were his own companions. Signifi­cantly,
there were no negative marks on Frank Johnson’s or Gust
Erickson’s records before they left Bitterna.
In Minneapolis, the immigrants encountered an urban environ­ment
with fewer grassroots controls. Seemingly overnight, they were
transported to a world in which it was possible to abandon oneself to
a moveable feast of tempting activities, with no interested neighbors
sitting in immediate judgment. They were young, single workingmen
in a city of striking contrasts. Church life and steady work hours were
juxtaposed to tavern culture and city nightlife. They also met a
steady influx of new ethnic groups as well as clearly marked eco­nomic
differences.
The diversity of languages and cultural patterns was immense, as
were the extremes of wealth and poverty. The mansions of the rich
stood out in contrast to the hovels of the poor. Unlike the limits of
their prescribed place in society in Skaraborg, the newcomers’ choices
multiplied exponentially in America. The relaxation of social con­trols
could offer a new sense of freedom, which could be deceiving. It
also allowed those who were so inclined the chance to nurse resent­ment
at the authoritarian societal structures they recalled from Swe­den.
Moreover, working-class men of Erickson, Johnson, and Lindquist’s
status were part of a minority street culture, unknown to them in
Skaraborg, which offered the freedom to mix with individuals from
all parts of the world. Those contacts surely broadened their hori­zons.
They learned different approaches to problem solving and got
ready tips about job opportunities. At the same time, they met up
96
with dangerous temptations. Street gangs and crime were common.
Gust Erickson was doubtless only one of many who fell victim to the
negative sides of urban street life in America.
Young immigrants moved often and interacted with mainstream
American culture only tangentially, that is, at work or in contact
with public offices. Some of those contacts were less than happy.
There can be no doubt that discrimination was common. Irish youths
tormented Swan Lindquist in his attempt to further his education,
and journalists openly ridiculed Frank Johnson’s broken English in
the press.124 Not having English as their native tongue and possessing
no trade skills, they were at the bottom of the salary scale on any job
and likely to be given the most dangerous tasks. The Swedes cannot
have helped noticing the Americans’ woeful ignorance of their home
country and the tendency to lump all working-class immigrants to­gether
in convenient categories, regardless of their national origins.
For instance, reporters did not bother to find the locations and names
of Erickson’s, Johnson’s, and Lindquist’s home areas, even when alleg­ing
that murderous tendencies originated there. Americans clearly
saw the Swedes as a strange foreign element. Even those reporters
with a certain level of sophistication could not figure the correct
linguistic way of referring to them.
The fact that Swedish-American readers could be incensed at
such neglect was reflected in a letter to the editor of The Daily
Evening Mail in 1876. An anonymous Swedish American chastised
the paper for using the word Swede as both a noun and an adjective.
Frank Johnson was, for example, a Swedish man, not a “Swede man,”
and an adult Swedish female was not a “Swede girl.” The writer of
this letter found such mistakes to be common in both speaking and
writing.
He had even more serious complaints. He berated newsmen for
their thoughtless treatment, in print, of immigrants from Sweden. It
was tme, he allowed, that Erickson’s murder was horrible, but “an
ignorant, brutal man should be pitied more than scorned.” If unedu­cated
Swedes committed murder, the press corps should have at least
as much empathy for them, the writer argued, as for native-born
Americans who committed equally serious crimes. In short, the writer
contended that there was a need for American reporters to give a
97
balanced presentation of the Swedish nation, which would include
not only news of its wrongdoers but also accounts of the country’s
internationally known heads of state, engineers, artists, and scien-tists.
125 Such calls for fairness fell on deaf ears of Minnesota journalists
assigned to the Erickson case.
Sympathetic Americans existed, of course, especially in the
ranks of fanners and small business owners who employed the new-coiners.
Yet the awareness that they were immigrant workers without
a firm foothold in American society was never absent from the minds
of the larger community. No urban ghetto in early Minnesota sur­passed
in size and activity drat, on Washington Avenue in Minneapo­lis,
where Gust Erickson and the Lindquist brothers lived and worked
in the 1870s.126 Men of all stripes came and went in a ceaseless
flow—the employed and unemployed, boarding house residents and
homeless, draymen and loiterers, lawless and law abiding. All passed
by, under the watchful eye of the police.
If at first it escaped their attention that they were on the lower
rungs of the social ladder, immigrants had only to glance at the far
end of Washington Avenue, where the upscale Barge’s Restaurant
stood. Barge’s published a daily listing in the St. Paul and Minneapo­lis
newspapers of all its prominent dinner guests. Executives, busi­nessmen,
clergy, doctors, judges, and lawyers marked their superior
social standing by being seen there. T h a t was a world to which
common immigrants had no access.127
Strict social distinctions were, of course, even more prevalent in
Sweden than in Minnesota. The remembered lack of social mobility
at home was a sore point for many immigrant Swedes. It was not
surprising, therefore, if they bridled under class divisions in their new
homeland or experienced their own working-class voice in commu­nity
affairs, vis-a-vis that of the English-language populace, as being
less than influential. Those ill feelings could manifest themselves at
critical junctures. When the police searched for Frank Johnson in
Kandiyohi in 1876, the Twin Cities press assured its readers that the
Swedish settlers there were as eager as all other Minnesotans to see
the (alleged) murderer captured.128 It cannot have been an accident,
however, th a t those very settlers were at th a t moment in reality
defying the law by aiding Johnson in his flight from the authorities.
98
At a point when one of their social class arid national group was
facing a desperate crisis, many felt they had little reason to support
representatives of the American establishment against a peer from
home.
In addition, many immigrants’ inherent, longstanding distmst of
the clergy was surely at the root of their dissatisfaction with Pastor
Gunderson. Disgruntled that Swedish Americans would not give away
Johnson’s hiding place in Kandiyohi, Gunderson did so himself. The
fact that Gunderson sided with the authorities, which he in tmth
could not be officially blamed for, must have been a bitter reminder
for some Minnesota Swedes of oppressive Old World connections
between church and state. Gunderson’s reputation among many Swed-ish-
American commonfolk plummeted even further when it was re-vealed
that he had issued threats against John Lindblad’s wife in
Kandiyohi and then later applied for and received a monetary reward
from the Minneapolis city government for aiding in the capture of
Barge’s Restaurant. This fashionable restaurant stood at the corner o f Second Avenue
South and Washington Avenue in the 1870s. Courtesy of Hennepin History Mu­seum
, Minneapolis.
99
Frank Johnson.129 America was the Promised Land for workers, but it
also offered second thoughts for those who kept a keen eye out for
the inequities around them. The Erickson murder presented numer­ous
reminders of that reality.
The case had its encouraging sides for Swedish Americans as
well. It showed the importance of people with enlightened, humani­tarian
views and emphasized the solidarity within their ranks. If not
for those who stood by Swan Lindquist, he might have wasted away
in prison much as Frank Johnson did. Likewise, the ever-shifting
kaleidoscope of American life presented opportunities. Andrew and
Swan Lindquist were two who saw their way clear and created suc­cessful
business careers. They proved that upward social mobility was
not a myth in America.
The general public in 1876 was also forced to reconsider its own
prejudices carefully. Immigrants were poor and different in their lan­guage
and habits. They lived apart from the mainstream. Was the
Erickson murder, therefore, just another inevitable case of one poor
minority member killing another, as is common in segregated societ­ies?
Journalists wavered between presenting the public with that de­pressing
image or coming to terms with the discovery that Johnson
the Murderer was also a person, whose thoughts and reactions de­served
to be understood. As Frank Johnson and Swan Lindquist went
off to prison, society at large was left with the question, still unre­solved
in our day, of how to reconcile ingrained societal revenge
motives with ideas of humane treatment of offenders.
The Erickson murder may now seem a forgotten drama. As a
topic of daily general conversation, it was dead long before Swan
Lindquist or Frank Johnson passed away. Yet the story remains rel­evant.
The assimilation of newcomers to the majority culture was a
major issue in the story. The key positive factors were a combination
of fair and honest treatment, collective loyalty, clearly defined per­sonal
goals, individual initiative, and the ability to bear up under
pressure. The combination was many layered, like the skins of the
figurative onion. The failure to reach an understanding of that cohe­sive
combination spelled doom for Gust Erickson and Frank Johnson.
They lacked the time, and perhaps the personal insight, to delve
below the first layer of impressionistic responses to the new society.
100
By way of contrast, Swan Lindquist realized the need for adapta­tion
in America. He left behind the resentment some of his fellow
immigrants felt and adjusted to his new situation. His way of intelli­gently
maneuvering through difficulties by the process of trial and
error and finally gaining acceptance stands as a microcosm for the
approach of the Swedish-American community in general. Assimila­tion
did not come easily or at once. Numerous problems had to be
overcome one precious step at a time.
If Swan Lindquist’s experiences were at all representative, it could
take newcomers years to find their permanent place in American
society. In the long run, the rewards matched the effort each indi­vidual
put into the process of adaptation. Those who most sensibly
interpreted and dealt with their situation succeeded best. Behind the
sensationalism of the Erickson murder lay that valuable lesson about
the long, sometimes painful path of immigrant assimilat ion into Ameri­can
society.
En d n o t e s
1. “Wellson’s Murder,” The Daily Evening Mail (DEM), Minneapolis, 29
January 1876; “The Murderers,” DEM, 4 February 1876; “The Bloody Pair,” The
St. Paul Daily Pioneer Press (SPDPP), 5 February 1876.
2. “Wellson’s Murder,” DEM; “The Murder Case,” DEM, 31 January 1876.
3. “The Murder,” The Minneapolis Tribune (MT), 30 January 1876; “The
Murder Case,” DEM.
4. “Wellson’s Murder,” DEM; “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876.
5. “That Horrible Murder,” SPDPP, 29 January 1876; “The Murder Case,”
DEM.
6. “The Murder Case,” DEM.
7. Ibid.
8. “The Murder,” MT, 4 February 1876; “The Murderers,” DEM.
9. “Caught at Last,” SPDPP, 4 February 1876; “The Murder,” MT, 4 Febru­ary
1876; “The Murderers,” DEM.
10. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist. State of Minnesota, County of Washington, 26 March,
1880, p. 4. Governors Files (2). Minnesota State Archives, Minnesota Historical
Society, St. Paul.
11. “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876; “The Murder Case,” DEM; “The
Murder,” Minneapolis Journal (MJ), 4 February 1876.
101
12. Bitterna. Skaraborgs län. Husförhörslängd 1853-1860. Karla, p. 60.
Bitterna. Skaraborgs län. Husförhörslängd 1865-1873. Karla östergård, p. 85.
Front Arkiv Digital, Falkenberg, Sweden. The farm was described in Swedish as
a “1/4 mantal.”
13. “The Erickson Murder,” SPDPP, 30 January 1876; Deposition of Swan
Lindquist, pp. 2-3.
14- G u s ta f Eriksson, Emigranten Populär, 1783-1951, EmiHamn,
Ancestry.com.
15. “That Horrible Murder,” SPDPP.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. James Matson, Svea, Minn., to Warden, Minnesota State Prison, 23 June
1923. Frank Jolmson Case File. Stillwater State Prison Folder. Minnesota State
Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
19. Bitterna. Skaraborgs län. Husförhörslängd 1853-1860. Tolanda, p. 12.
Arkiv Digital. The phrase “owner and cultivator” was “ägare och bmkare” in
Swedish. The farm was described in Swedish as “1/8 mantal."
20. “The Murderers,” DEM.
21. Wester Bitternas Socken. Husförhörs längd för Väster Bitterna Socken
åren 1865-1873. Tolanda östra rote, p. 92. Arkiv Digital.
22. In- och Utflyttnings-längd för Bitterna Socken. Från och med år 1872
till och med år 1897. In- och Utflyttnings-längd för Bitterna Församling 1872, p.
1. Arkiv Digital.
23. Ibid.; Svante Johnsson, Emigranten Populär, 1783-1951, EmiHamn,
Ancestry.com; Johan Johansson, Emigranten Populär,1783-1951, EmiHamn,
Ancestry.com.
24- The three brothers went through no official, legal name change in
Minnesota. The biggest landowner in Bitterna parish was a family named
Lindblad. The Jonasson brothers appear to have arbitrarily chosen the name of
Lindquist as a variant of Lindblad.
25. Stillwater State Prison Convict Record, p. 432. Stillwater State Prison
Folder. Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
26. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for Pardon
of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 1. Deposition of Moses Stoddard. In the
Matter of the Application for Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 15 May 1880, p. 2.
27. Deposition of J. B. Bassett. In the Matter of the Application for Pardon
of Swan Lindquist, 14 April 1880, p. 1.
28. “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876; “The Murderers,” DEM.
29. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 3.
30. “Wellson’s Murder,” DEM.
102
31. Frank Johnson född 1847-09-10. Profile of Fredrik Johannesson/Frank
Johnson, 1847-1873. Compiled by Svenska Emigrant institutet, Växjö, Sweden.
In possession of the author.
32. Deposition of Frank Johnson. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 3.
33. Stillwater State Prison Convict Record, p. 431. Stillwater State Prison
Folder. Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul; “Caught at Last,” SPDPP, 4
February 1876; Physical Condition Reports. Vol. A-C, 1875-1905. Stillwater
State Prison Folder. Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul. Tire prison Physi­cal
Condition Reports showed that Frank Johnson stood just under 5’ 4”. He was
in fact 5’ 3 5/8” tall and weighed 134 pounds.
34- Frank Johnson född 1847-09-10, pp. 4-5; In- och Utflyttnings-längd för
Bitterna moder Församling, 1873, p. 4; E Johannesson, New York Passenger Lists,
1820-1957, two pages, Ancestry.com.
35. In- och Utflyttnings-längd för Bitterna moder Lörsamling, 1873, pp. 3-4-
36. Deposition of Frank Johnson. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, March 26, 1880, p. 1; “Caught at Last,” SPDPP.
37. Hennepin County Naturalization Records, Index, Vol. 9; SAM 43, Roll
5, Code 15, pp. 392-93, Vol. 4, Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
38. Deposition of Frank Johnson. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 2.
39. “Wellson’s Murder,” DEM.
40. Ibid.; “The Erickson Murder,” SPDPP.
41. “Murder!” MT, 28 January 1876; “Murder Most Foul,” SPDPP, 28 Janu­ary
1876; “Mord auf Der Ostseite,” Minneapolis Freie Presse (MFP), 15 February
1876.
42. “That Horrible Murder,” SPDPP.
43. Ibid.; “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876; “Mord auf Der Ostseite,”
MFP; Nordstjeman (New York), 11 February 1876.
44- “The Murder Case,” DEM.
45. “The Erickson Murder,” SPDPP; “The Murder Case,” DEM.
46. “The Murder,” MT, 2 February 1876.
47. “The Murder,” MJ; “The Murderers,” DEM.
48. James Matson, Svea, Minn., to Warden, Minnesota State Prison, 16 June
1923.
49. “The Murderers,” DEM; “Caught at Last,” SPDPP. In the days following
Erickson’s death, a blizzard struck parts of Minnesota with low temperatures.
DEM, 29 January 1976.
50. “The Murderer,” SPDPP, 13 February 1876; “Caught at Last,” SPDPP.
51. “The Murder,” MJ; “Caught at Last,” SPDPP. Olof Ekdahl lived in Tri­poli
Township, Kandiyohi County. He was sixty-one in 1876. Minnesota State
103
Population Census Schedules, 1865-1905 (1875). Roll 10, page 674. Minne­sota
State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
52. “Swift Retribution,” DEM, 3 February 1876; “The Murder,” MJ; “Caught
at Last,” SPDPP; “The Murderers,” DEM.
53. “Th e Bloody Pair,” SPDPP.
54. “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876; “The Murderers,” DEM.
55. “The Murderers,” DEM; “Mord auf Der Ostseite,” MFP, 5 February 1876.
Deposition of Frank Johnson. In the Matter of the Application for Pardon of
Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 3.
56. Deposition of Frank Johnson. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 4-
57. MJ, 17 February 1876; MJ, 18 February 1876; MJ, 22 February 1876;
“Tire Common Pleas,” DEM, 10 March 1876; “Court of Common Pleas,” SPDPP,
11 March 1876.
58. State of Minnesota, County of Hennepin, Court of Common Pleas. The
State of Minnesota against Swan Lindquist and Frank Johnson, p. 67. Criminal
and Civil Cases, Hennepin County G overnment Center, Minneapolis.
59. Progressive Men of Minnesota: Biographical Sketches and Portraits of the
Leaders in Business, Politics, and the Professions, together with an Historical and
Descriptive Sketch of the State, ed. Marion D. Shutter and J. S. McLain (Minne­apolis:
The Minneapolis Journal, 1897), 219; The Book of Minnesotans: A Bio-ginphical
Dictionary of Leading Living Men of the State of Minnesota, ed. Albert
Nelson Marquis (Chicago: A. N. Marquis and Company, 1907), 20; Little Sketches
of Big Folks: An Alphabetical List of Representative Men of Minnesota with Bio-graphical
Sketches (St. Paul: R. L. Polk, 1907), 16. Frank Johnson was represented
by the law firm of Lochlen, McNair, and Gillilan, but little was said in the
official papers or the press about the firm’s efforts on behalf of their client. “The
Courts,” MJ, 11 March 1876.
60. State of Minnesota, County of Hennepin, Court of Common Pleas. The
State of Minnesota against Swan Lindquist and Frank Johnson, p. 67. Criminal
and Civil Cases. Hennepin County Government Center, Minneapolis. “The
Common Pleas,” DEM; “Court of Common Pleas,” SPDPP; “The Courts,” MJ.
61. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 7.
62. James W. Lawrence, late County A ttorney H ennepin County, Minn., to
Hon. J. S. Pillsbury, Gov. of Minnesota, 12 August 1880. Governors Files (2).
Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
63. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 7.
64- “The Murderers,” DEM.
65. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
104
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 6.
66. James W. Lawrence, late County Attorney Hennepin County, Minn., to
Hon. J. S. Pillsbury, Gov. of Minnesota, 12 August 1880.
67. “State Prison,” MJ, 15 April 1876.
68. Press coverage of the Erickson murder case was extensive. Both English
and foreign language presses were involved. Swedish-American papers covering
the murder included Hemlandet (Chicago), Svenska Amerikanaren (Chicago),
and Nordstjeman (New York). The present study has concentrated on coverage
from the Minneapolis and St. Paul area. Principal newspapers cited are The Daily
Evening Mail (Minneapolis), Minneapolis Journal, The Minneapolis Tribune, The
St. Paul Daily Pioneer Press, and Minneapolis Freie Presse.
69. “Murder Most Foul,” SPDPP; “Murder,” MT.
70. “Mord auf Der Ostseite,” MFR
71. “Murder Most Foul,” SPDPP.
72. “Wellson’s Murder,” DEM; “The Erickson Murder,” SPDPP; “Caught at
Last,” SPDPP; “The Bloody Pair,” SPDPP.
73. “That Horrible Murder,” SPDPP; “The Murder,” MJ.
74- “That Horrible Murder,” SPDPP; “Johnson the Murderer,” DEM, 2 Feb-ruary
1876; SPDPP, 6 February 1876; “Murder!” MT; “Swift Retribution,” DEM.
75. “Caught at Last,” SPDPP.
76. “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876; “The Common Pleas,” DEM.
77. “The Common Pleas,” DEM; “The Courts,” DEM, 11 March 1876.
78. “Caught at Last,” SPDPP; “The Murder,” MT, 4 February 1876.
79. “The Murderer,” SPDPP.
80. “The Murderers,” DEM; “The Bloody Pair,” SPDPP.
81. “Court of Common Pleas,” SPDPP.
82. “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876.
83. “The Erickson Murder,” SPDPP.
84. “The Common Pleas,” DEM.
85. “The Courts,” MJ, 11 March 1876, 4 April 1876.
86. SPDPP, 6 February 1876.
87. “The Erickson Murder,” SPDPP.
88. Carl-Martin Bergstrand, Frillesåsmärket och Albert Sandklef eller Sandklef
och Gällingemärket (The Frillesås scar and Albert Sandklef or Sandklef and the
Galling scar) (Göteborg: Gumperts förlag, 1950), 41.
89. Ibid., 40. For detailed information on knife fighting customs in south­western
Sweden in the nineteenth century, see the companion volumes: Carl-
Martin Bergstrand, Frillesåsmärket och Albert Sandklef eller Saridldef och Gällingemärket
(n. 88) and Carl-Martin Bergstrand, Albert Sandklef och Frillesåsmärket (Albert
Sandklef and the Frillesås scar) (Göteborg: Gumperts förlag, 1953).
90. For this information, many thanks to Professor Bengt af Klintberg, of
105
Lidingö, Sweden, in a personal communication to the author, 27 December
2007.
91. MJ, 2 March 1876.
92. MJ, 15 April 1876.
93. Theo. H. Laws to Mr. Henry W. Wolfer, Warden, State Penitentiary,
Stillwater Minn., 16 April 1907; and Henry Wolfer to Mr. Theo. H. Laws,
Minneapolis Tribune, 17 April 1907. Both in Frank Johnson Case File. Stillwater
State Prison Folder. Minnesota S tate Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
94. “Swift R etribution,” DEM.
95. DEM, 17 February 1876; “A Stunner,” MJ, 3 March 1876.
96. DEM, 24 February 1876.
97. “The Body Snatchers,” DEM, 16 March 1876; “The Bodies of the Dead,”
DEM, 18 March 1876; DEM, 9 March 1876.
98. DEM, 2 March 1876.
99. Warden C. S. Reed to Rev. C. E. Benson, Stillwater, Minn., 7 February
1917. Frank Johnson Case File. Stillwater State Prison Folder.
100. Deposition of Eugene A. Merrill. State of Minnesota, County of
Hennepin. In the Matter of the Application for Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 2
April 1880.
101. Warden C. S. Reed to Rev. C. E. Benson, Stillwater, Minn., 7 February
1917.
102. G. A. Newman, Prison Physician, to Warden J. J. Sullivan, Stillwater,
Minnesota, 21 May 1923. Frank Johnson Case File. Stillwater State Prison Folder.
Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
103. Frank Johnson. Inmate Register Sheets. Stillwater State Prison Folder.
Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
104. G. A. Newman, Prison Physician, to Warden C. S. Reed, 3 January
1917. G. A. Newman, Prison Physician, to Warden J. J. Sullivan, 21 May 1923.
Frank Johnson Case File.
105. Frank Johnson was a subscriber to Chicago Bladet.
106. “The Bloody Pair,” SPDPP; MJ, 18 February 1876.
107. Warden J. J. Sullivan to State Board of Control, Saint Paul, Minn., 31
May 1923; G. A. Newman, Prison Physician, to Warden J. J. Sullivan, 31 May
1923. Both in Frank Johnson Case File. The cause of Frank Johnson’s death was
given as arterio-sclerosis.
108. Ernest A. Lilja to Warden, Minn. State Prison (no date); Warden J. J.
Sullivan to Mr. Ernest A. Lilja, Mitchell, So[uth] Dakjota], 5 June 1923. Frank
Johnson Case File. Frank Johnson had $1,221.56 in his prison account. It has
proven impossible to discover how the money was used after his death.
109. James Matson, Svea, Minn., to Warden, Minnesota State Prison, 16
June 1923. Frank Johnson Case File.
106
110. Physical Condition Reports. Vol. A-C, 1875-1905. Stillwater State
Prison Folder. Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
111. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 7.
112. The depositions of the Deputy Warden, Abe Hall; the foreman of the
prison paint shop, Frank Lemon; and several prison guards all appear as part of
the file entitled In the Matter of the Application for Pardon of Swan Lindquist.
Testimonials to Swan Lindquist’s pre-prison work from former employers are in
the same file.
113. Petition for the Pardon of Swan Lindquist. To His Excellency Hon.
Lucius L. Hubbard, Governor of Minnesota, 1 September 1882. Contained in
the file entitled In the Matter of the Application for Pardon of Swan Lindquist.
114- J- S. Pillsbury, State of Minnesota, Executive Department, to Mssrs
Koon, Merrill, and Kelty, 16 May 1881. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist. For information on Swan Lindquist’s release from
prison, see Convict Record, Stillwater State Prison Folder. Minnesota State Ar­chives,
MFIS, St. Paul.
115. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 7.
116. State of Minnesota. Division of Vital Statistics. Certificate of Death
#20319.1936. Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
117. Fourteenth Census of the U nited States. 1920 Population. Sixth ward.
Enumeration District 112. Hennepin County, Minnesota. Minnesota State Ar­chives,
MHS, St. Paul.
118. History of the Police and Fire Departments of the Twin Cities: Their Origin
in Early Village Days and Progress to 1900. Historical and Biographical (Minneapo­lis/
St. Paul: American Land and Title Register Association, 1899), 270; “Will­iam
T. Hoy,” History of Minneapolis: Gateway to the North, Vol. II. (Chicago/
Minneapolis: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1923), 787. At one point Michael
Hoy himself ended up in jail. He illegally pursued a Minnesota fugitive across
the international border to Canada. Officials in Winnipeg arrested Hoy and
kept him in jail for six months.
119. Tribune’s Directory for Minneapolis and St. Anthony, 1871-72 (Minne­apolis
Tribune Co., 1871), 19; Minneapolis City Directory, 1871-1876, microfilm
204- Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul; Campbell’s Minneapolis City Di­rectory,
1877-8 (Minneapolis: W. M. Campbell, 1877), p. 95.
120. Progressive Men of Minnesota, 219; MJ, 4 May 1920, p. 17.
121. State of Minnesota. Division of Vital Statistics. Certificate of Death
#19997. 1924. Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
122. Minneapolis City Directory for 1880-81 (Minneapolis: Johnson and
Harrison, 1880).
107
123. For a concise study of the Church of Sweden’s role in everyday life in
southwestern Sweden during the period leading up to the time of the present
study, see: CarhMartin Bergstrand, Kulturbilder från 1700-talets Bohuslän (Cul­tural
images from eighteenth-century Bohus County) (Göteborg: Eländers
Boktryckeri AB, 1937).
124- MJ, 13 February 1876.
125. “Only a Swede Man,” DEM, 4 February 1876.
126. Minneapolis City Directory, 1871-1876, microfilm 204- Nlinnesota State
Archives, MHS, St. Paul. The Lindquist brothers and Gust Erickson all lived
within two blocks of Washington Avenue in Minneapolis during the mid-1870s.
127. Barge’s Restaurant was located at 49 South Washington Avenue in
Minneapolis. Barge’s published its daily list of dinner guests in the English lan­guage
newspapers of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
128. “The Murder,” MT, 4 February 1876.
129. “Caught at I^ast,” SPDPP; SPDPP, 9 February 1876.

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The Dinkytown Murder:
A Study of Violence, Media Response, and
Immigrant Assimilation in Nineteenth'
Century Minnesota
R o g e r M c k n i g h t
T h e M u r d e r
Tnis is the story of three ordinary immigrants from Sweden who
acted out extraordinary events in Minnesota. They called them
selves Gust (Wellson) Erickson, Frank Johnson, and Swan
Lindquist. All three arrived in Minneapolis during the 1870s and
found work as laborers. When those jobs failed, they hired out as
farmhands. Such inauspicious details did little to distinguish the three
Swedes from thousands of their fellow newcomers. As part of the
growing urban proletariat, they moved in and out of the city, obeying
the dictates of economic necessity. Yet they were too young to envi­sion
completely where their paths might lead. All that changed dras­tically
in the last week of January 1876. With resounding swiftness,
the events of those few fateful winter days left one of the three men
dead and changed the lives of the others irrevocably.
Gust Erickson, Frank Johnson, and Swan Lindquist had known
one another since their early days in Sweden. With time the relation­ship
between Erickson and Johnson grew troubled, and it worsened
after they reached Minnesota. In 1875, Erickson told Lindquist that
he intended to attack Johnson and steal his savings. Lindquist warned
Johnson of those plans. On January 24, 1876, Johnson arrived in
Farmer associate editor of the Quarterly, ROGER M C K N IG H T is a professor of
Swedish and Scandinavian studies at Gnstavus Adolphns College, St. Peter, Minne­sota.
He is the author of numerous articles on Stvedish America and a frequent con­tributor
to the Quarterly.
o ~ i
oo
Minneapolis. This photograph dates from before 1870. The East Bank, where Gust Erickson was killed, is in
the foreground. Courtesy of Hennepin History Museum, Minneapolis. Carl Larsson (28 May 1853-22
January 1919).
59
Minneapolis from his place of work nearby and joined his two coun­trymen.
hr addition to his savings, he carried a concealed knife.1
Three days of highly confused and confusing camaraderie fol­lowed.
Erickson, Johnson, and Lindquist played cards together, stopped
at downtown taverns, and paid calls on their friends.2 Acquaintances
and strangers alike saw them parading along the streets and boarding
city streetcars. Some said the three appeared hopelessly inebriated,
while others asserted they were only pretending to be drunk to at­tract
attention. The men spoke loudly in Swedish and broken En­glish.
On one streetcar their talk offended a lady, and they had to be
quieted. A streetcar driver overheard them arguing heatedly over
the favors of a young Swedish woman.3
At times the Swedes shook hands or embraced fondly, while
explaining to strangers that they were friends from the old country
only now being reunited after six years apart.4 At other moments
Erickson and Johnson turned sour and threatened each other. One
passenger watched as Johnson reached for his wallet, only to bare the
point of the six-inch hunting knife hidden under his coat. Not long
after that, Johnson reportedly told Erickson, “I’ll fix you.”5 Lindquist
variously acted as a go-between or distanced himself by dozing, or
pretending to doze, in the warmth of the moving streetcars.6
Their strange behavior reached its culmination on January 26, a
Tuesday. That evening the three boarded a tram in downtown Min­neapolis.
They rode across to the east bank of the Mississippi River
and switched to another car on the University line. As darkness fell,
they alighted at the University of Minnesota stop. There they stood
and talked. Then they trudged off into the night and crossed a darkened
field before arriving at a grove of trees in a frozen marshland.7
At Johnson’s suggestion, Lindquist walked ahead and out of sight.
Meanwhile Erickson fell twice in the snow. Johnson hesitated both
times but then helped him up. When Erickson fell a third time,
Johnson knelt down and without wanting pulled his knife. He slit
Erickson’s throat from ear to ear and then got up and walked away.
As Erickson yelled out in his death throes, Johnson went back to
deliver several more stab wounds.8 Erickson reached out to ward off
those thrusts, but Johnson hacked through the sleeves and stripped
flesh from his amis.9 Then all was quiet.
O n O
The comer of I 2* Avenue and Fifth Street SE today. In the 1870s this same area was an undeveloped marshland. By a small
stand of trees nearby, Gust Erickson met his death on 26 January 1876. Photo by the author.
61
Johnson flung his weapon to the ground and ran to rejoin Lindquist.
He announced: “He won’t kill me now. I got him killed, he is dead
already.”10 Johnson next led Lindquist back toward the streetcar stop.
Behind them they left Erickson’s still wann and bleeding body, Johnson’s
discarded knife, and their own footprints in the newly fallen snow.
Soon after the Swedish youths abandoned the scene, local au­thorities
and the Twin Cities press corps descended on it. Within
days, the murder of Gust Erickson developed into one of the greatest
media sensations of Minnesota’s early history. For the better part of a
year beginning on 28 January 1876, journalists across the state re­ferred
to Erickson’s death simply as The Murder.11 Needing no more
introduction, the public followed the case from day to day with a
never flagging interest. Indeed, the violence shocked state officials,
law enforcement officers, journalists, and ordinary citizens to an as­tounding
degree.
Against the background of the emotions aroused by the killing
itself and the considerable attention paid to it in the public arena,
the purpose of the present study is three-fold. The intention is to
trace the lives of the three humble Swedes involved in the events of
January 1876, to study the press coverage of the killing, and to
indicate the significance of the case to the Swedish-American immi­grant
experience in Minnesota and to the broader mainstream com­munity.
In short, was the story of Gust Erickson, Frank Johnson, and
Swan Lindquist an aberration in the otherwise conventional and
clearly outlined history of Swedish settlement in Minnesota? Or did
it, like the peeled skin of a proverbial onion, suggest to ethnic Swedes
the varied layers of adjustment and assimilation problems they faced
on the road to full acceptance in American society? And what role
did the media play in that process?
W h o W er e T h e y ?
A n attempt to explain Erickson’s death raises immediate ques­tions
regarding the three Swedish immigrants: Who were they? And
what were their lives like prior to January 1876? Erickson’s, Johnson’s,
and Lindquist’s names are, naturally, not to be found in Swedish
history books or in standard accounts of Swedish-American culture.
62
If not for the events of 1876, they would surely have lived out their
lives in the same obscurity with which they began them. Neverthe­less,
a good deal can be found about their origins. They had much in
common, including the fact that their identities in Sweden did not
fully match up with those they assumed in Minnesota.
The murdered man, Gust Erickson, came from a tiny farming
community in Skaraborg, Västergötland. His true name was Anders
Gustaf Eriksson. He was bom in October 1854, the third of five
children. His father owned a small one-quarter subdivided fami in
the parish of Bitterna. The boy’s childhood passed uneventfully. He
attended school for six years and was part of a confirmation class in
the Church of Sweden. As a teenager, he stayed with his family, even
as other youngsters began leaving home to find work.12 He grew to
be over six feet tall and had a thick head of white hair. His compan­ions
in Sweden knew nothing especially bad about him. They consid­ered
him good natured but careless of his possessions and money.13
His first move away from home came at eighteen, when he
emigrated. He had no discernible pressing reasons to leave Sweden.
His family did not suffer undue poverty and they had no relatives in
America. Most likely, he only followed along in the mounting tide of
young people looking for change. On 29 March 1872 he sailed from
Göteborg to New York and arrived in Minnesota on 28 April.14
From that point on, he exhibited extreme restlessness and suspicious
behavior. He stayed the summer of 1874 in Minneapolis, working for
a while as an assistant cook in a soup line, then moved to Milwau­kee,
where he found a job as a streetcar driver. By the spring of 1875,
he was back in Minnesota, but he soon quit work there and traveled
to New Orleans. In that city he signed on with a merchant vessel,
which took him back to Europe. His ship put into port in Göteborg,
but he had no chance to visit his parents in Bitterna.15
By the fall of 1875, he was in Minneapolis again. At that time he
began calling himself Gust Wellson, although his closest acquaintan­ces
still knew him as Erickson. He found temporary employment. In
between jobs, he roomed in boarding houses or moved in as a squat­ter
in condemned buildings. When his friends and several strangers
reported that money and valuables had been stolen from them, Min­neapolis
police quickly fingered Erickson as the culprit but lacked
63
sufficient evidence to arrest him. In late 1875, Erickson got a job as a
teamster. His employer praised him as a hard worker but noted that
Erickson began showing off sums of money that far exceeded his
earnings. The same employer described Erickson as the “associate
and companion of thieves and bad characters” and noted that he
bore the scars of frequent street fights.16
Toward the end of 1875, Erickson quit repotting for work, with­out
giving notice. His puzzled employer eventually ran into him on
the street and learned Erickson had been in jail in St. Paul for drunk­enness
and vagrancy. Erickson asked for his job back, but learned it
had been filled in his absence.17 By the time the New Year of 1876
dawned, Erickson had been in America for nearly four years and
succeeded in arousing the mistrust of the police, his former employ­ers,
and most of his acquaintances. The general consensus was re­flected
in the comment of a Swede who knew him in Minnesota. In
that man’s words, Gust Erickson was “a low down thief and robber.”18
It is unlikely anyone other than his parents knew Gust Erickson
better than Swan Lindquist . He was one of the few persons in America
who could tolerate Erickson’s behavior. Lindquist was also bom in
Bitterna in September 1853. His true Swedish name was Svante
Jonasson. He was the youngest of three sons. His father was described
as the “owner and cultivator” of the small, one-eighth subdivided
family fann. That holding was located only half a mile from Gustaf
Eriksson’s home place.19 As a result, Gustaf and Svante grew up close
to each other and attended the same school together in grades one
through six.20
Svante Jonasson’s childhood was not easy. His mother died in
1858, when he was five. He grew up working on his father’s fann, but
in 1870, when the boy was seventeen, the father also passed away.
Svante’s oldest brother, Anders Jonasson (bom in 1846) had de­parted
for America in 1868.21 That left only Svante and his brother
Johan (bom 1849) in Sweden. Svante took a farm job away from
home in 1870, but returned to Bitterna in mid-January 1872.22 Two
months later he and his brother Johan left. In the company of Gustaf
Eriksson, they sailed for America on 29 March, when Svante was still
only nineteen.23 For the two brothers emigration was a logical choice.
Having lost the farm after their father died, they faced an uncertain
64
Swan Lindquist, Stillwater State Prison inmate #656, clad in prison stripes. The scar
on Lindquist’s cheekbone was the result o f a workplace accident in Minneapolis, when
the wheels of a horse-drawn wagon rolled over his head. Though strong of build,
Lindquist was only 5'4" tall. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.
future in Sweden. In May 1872, they joined up with their brother
Anders in Minneapolis. It was at that time their names underwent a
sea change. Anders Jonasson had begun calling himself Andrew
Lindquist, and Svante and Johan followed suit. From 1872 onward
they were officially known in America as Swan and John Lindquist.24
Swan Lindquist made a good first impression on people. Though
under 5’7” in height, he was strong, energetic, and outgoing. His
facial features were also pleasing. He had brown hair, a fair complex-ion,
and blue gray eyes.25 With those appealing qualities he found
work almost immediately. His first job was on a farm, where he
received room and board and started school. He quit school after
only a month, however, when the other schoolboys, all Irish, chided
him mercilessly for not speaking English and bullied him for being
shorter than they.26
He then moved to Minneapolis, where he worked at two differ­ent
jobs as a delivery1 boy, perhaps under the influence of his brother
Andrew, who ran a downtown delivery and freight service. Swan
Lindquist’s reputation as a responsible worker grew steadily. One
employer stated that he perfomred his duties more intelligently than
any of the older men he had employed. Another attested that the
youth learned more English in a few months than other immigrants
could in five or six years.27 Lindquist himself was more modest. He
said he had learned to read Swedish well in the Bitterna school, but
wrote it poorly. He also stated that he spoke English haltingly and
had scarcely any reading knowledge of it.28
Swan Lindquist was accident-prone. He lost his second delivery
job when a cart turned over on top of him and nearly cmshed his
skull. He was cared for by two different doctors in Minneapolis, who
recognized his positive qualities and gave him work in their offices.
In the spring of 1875, Lindquist was well enough to leave for another
fann job, only to suffer a broken ann when he was kicked by a horse.
In the fall, he returned to recuperate from the accident at his brother
HENNEPIN AVENUE - AMNNEAP0U5
IN 1869
PENCE OPERA HOUSE
______________________ rH£-M£C,f6(MVI>M •_____________________
Heimepin Avenue in downtown Mirmeapolis in 1869. Swan Lindquist’s brother,
Andrew, arrived here from Sweden in 1868 and established his delivery and freight
service in the area in 1869. Courtesy of Heimepin History Museum, Minneapolis.
66
Frankjohnson, Stillwater State Prison inmate #655, in prison garb. Professor Winchel
identified Johnson by his "reddish face covered with freckles" and his "rather peculiar
lips and nose." Johnson stood just under 5 ’4" tall and weighed only 134 pounds.
Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.
Andrew’s home in Minneapolis.29 His fortunes gradually declined
after that. In unaccustomed idleness, he began drinking, wandering
the downtown streets, and spending most of the daylight hours at
Gust Erickson’s work place. In fact, Erickson’s employer suspected
that Lindquist’s frequent visits, which the employer interpreted as
loitering, led in part to Erickson’s suddenly abandoning his job and
taking to the streets. He even speculated that the two youths were
sharing stolen money.30
As 1876 began, Erickson and Lindquist were out of work. Their
only close acquaintance who had ready cash was Frank Johnson, the
last of the young men in the Bitterna group to leave Sweden. Frank
Johnson’s early life in that country had been essentially the same as
Erickson’s and Swan Lindquist’s, even though he was older than they.
Bom in October 1847 at the village of Grönhult, also in Skaraborg
län, he was the youngest of six children. His Swedish name was
Fredrik Johannesson. His father worked as a quartermaster or equip­
67
ment manager (rusthdllare) and, by the modest standards of the area,
was reasonably well off. While his siblings came to be famr owners or
married well, Fredrik followed the path of poorer boys by hiring out
as a famrhand. Between 1863 and 1870, he served at three different
farms before moving to Bitterna in 1871.31 There he came into close
contact with Gustaf Eriksson and Svante Jonasson. He also fell for a
neighborhood serving girl named Thilda Andersdotter.32
Fredrik Johannesson was easy to spot. He stood only 5’4” tall,
had bright red hair, bluish gray eyes, and a freckled, florid complex­ion.
33 From his earliest years, he was known to be timid and excep­tionally
thrifty, often carrying large sums of money with him. Not
surprisingly, he went in constant fear of being beaten and robbed. By
1872, his mother was dead, his father remarried, and Fredrik, now
twenty-five, was already outdistanced, both socially and financially,
by his older siblings. To escape th a t uncomfortable situation, he
sailed for America in April 1873 and arrived in New York on 6 May.
By 10 May he was in M in n e so ta .34 Five mon ths la te r T h ild a
Andersdotter also left Sweden and joined two of her sisters in Minne­apolis.
35 In 1873, Fredrik took the name Frank Johnson, while Thilda
came to be called Tilda Anderson.
Frank Johnson first went to work in St. Paul, but during the years
1874 and 1875 he switched to a job as a farmhand in nearby Hastings.36
He made frequent trips to Minneapolis to visit Tilda and to make the
rounds with Gust Erickson and the Lindquists. A sign of their friend­ship
occurred on 3 April 1875, when Gust Erickson, Swan Lindquist,
and Frank Johnson appeared together at City Hall in Minneapolis
and took out their first United States naturalization papers.37 Soon
afterward, Johnson convinced Lindquist to go to work at the Hastings
farm where Johnson was employed.
Swan Lindquist’s time in Hastings was short. He suffered the
aforementioned broken arm there and left. A t the same general time,
Erickson discovered Johnson’s risky habit of carrying cash in a pocket
under his work clothes. Without Lindquist’s protective hand, the
diminutive Johnson became an easy target. Erickson first assaulted
him on a bridge in Minneapolis. Later he appeared in Hastings and
attacked Johnson in the dark. Both robbery attempts were unsuccess­ful.
The third and most serious assault occurred in January 1876, also
68
at the Hastings farm. It began as Johnson went out to the stalls to
feed his horses just before dawn. Erickson jumped his victim from
high in the rafters behind him. He tried to strangle him and then rip
his coat off and take the money. Johnson stmggled free but was badly
injured and unable to talk or sleep for days thereafter.38 Soon after
the attack, Hastings police identified Erickson passing through town
on his way back to Minneapolis.39
Johnson recovered but remained mortally afraid. He took the
advice of a Hastings police officer and purchased a hunting knife at a
Hastings store for self-defense. A local man sharpened it for him. On
Sunday, 24 January, he left on the morning train for Minneapolis to
seek out Gust Erickson and come to terms with him. He told his
employer to expect him back by the evening of the same day. He did
not return until the following Wednesday.40
Ma n h u n t
On the afternoon of Wednesday, 27 January 1876, a local mer­chant
named George Andrews went for a walk just north of Fifth
Street Southeast in Minneapolis. After crossing a field, he came to a
marsh, located in what is now the heart of Dinkytown, a business,
entertainment, and residential area known to generations of Univer­sity
of Minnesota students as a popular gathering spot. In the 1870s,
the area was still an uninhabited, seldom-visited swamp. There Andrews
spotted a mutilated corpse lying just inside a fence. He quickly
notified authorities and before nightfall Minneapolis police and the
County Coroner were at the scene. After studying the evidence, they
were left with only three leads. They had an unidentified body, a
bloody knife, and the copious boot prints of three unknown men.41
Detective Michael Hoy and Coroner Peter O. Chilstrom studied
the dead man’s hair color and complexion and judged him to be a
Scandinavian. By the size of the boot prints, they saw one of the men
had large feet and guessed he was over six feet tall, which fit the
description of the body before them. The next day the coroner
removed the body to a funeral home and invited the public to view
it for identification purposes. Hundreds of curious townsfolk accepted
the invitation and filed past the corpse. Several of his fomrer employ-
Nicollet Avenue in downtown Minneapolis in 1870. Erickson, Johnson, and Littdquist boarded the streetcar
on Nicollet Avenue on the ill-fated evening o f 26 January 1876 and rode it across the Mississippi River to
the University of Minnesota stop. Courtesy of Hennepin History Museum, Minneapolis.
a\
so
70
ers immediately recognized the features of Gust Erickson. In Erickson’s
pocket, police found a Christmas and New Year’s greeting to his
parents in Sweden, which Erickson had written nearly a month earlier
but neglected to mail.42
The news spread quickly. Minneapolis was still a new and grow­ing
town, and street people like Erickson were easily recognized.
Reliable witnesses soon appeared. Those included streetcar drivers
and passengers alike, who remembered Erickson and his companions
and their numerous streetcar rides of the previous days. Some even
knew the men by name. One driver recalled how Swan Lindquist
and Johnson angrily accused Erickson of seducing Tilda Anderson as
Erickson’s way of further intimidating Johnson. This information led
police to the theory, which was to persist for years in the minds of
Minnesota Swedes from Bitterna, that the rivalry between Erickson
and Johnson sprang from a jealous love affair, not just from a money
issue. A fellow passenger from the previous Monday testified that
Erickson told him his companions were out to hurt him and hopped
off the streetcar in fear, only to board it again a few stops later. 43
The most prominent witness was the eminent Minnesota State
Geologist and university professor Horace N. Winchell. Professor
Winchell had been returning to his home near the University of
Minnesota on the same streetcar that carried the three Swedes on the
ill-fated Tuesday of 26 January. On that ride Winchell studied the
three carefully and even talked briefly with Erickson. He described
Erickson and Johnson in detail. 1 le gave a less careful description of
the youth who dozed in the seat in front of him. Nonetheless it
matched the appearance of Swan Lindquist. Two days later Michael
Hoy used that and other information to track down Lindquist, who
was innocently walking the downtown streets and had even visited
the funeral home to view Erickson’s body.44
Once in custody, Lindquist told Coroner Chilstrom the story of
the murder in Swedish and positively identified Frank Johnson as the
killer. As Michael Hoy placed Swan Lindquist behind bars, news
arrived from Johnson’s famt family in Hastings. Johnson had returned
there and asked his employer for back wages. In nervous agitation,
he told the employer’s wife it would not be safe for them if he stayed
at their farm any longer. Thinking Johnson had become mentally ill,
71
she agreed. Johnson said he intended to leave Minnesota to visit a
cousin in Illinois.45
On Thursday Johnson took the train from Hastings to St. Paul.
Michael Hoy caught wind of Johnson’s movements and went from
Minneapolis to St. Paul to intercept him, only to find that Johnson
had already left St. Paul for Minneapolis.46 At that point began a
feverish manhunt, which bore the hallmarks of a complicated farce
mixed with the panic-induced actions of a desperate flight. The
chase covered much of central and west central Minnesota.
With detectives hot on his trail, Frank Johnson went straight to
the Milwaukee Road Depot in Minneapolis. There an off-duty street­car
driver, who recognized him from the previous weekend, saw
Johnson boarding a westbound train, rather than heading for the spot
where police were lying in wait for him, that is, at the tracks leading
east to Chicago. Johnson rode west as far as die village of Kandiyohi,
in the heart of a major Swedish fanning settlement. He quietly checked
into a hotel there and listened with interest at a local store as cus­tomers
read aloud from florid newspaper accounts of the finding of
Erickson’s body. Johnson then contacted John Lindblad, a friend from
Bitterna, who lived near Kandiyohi. Lindblad took Johnson in. The
two men held a dance at Lindblad’s home that same evening. Johnson
entertained guests by playing the accordion and then retired to sleep
all night in a haystack.47
W h en villagers at the dance insistently inquired about the
newcomer’s identity, Lindblad decided to keep Johnson out of sight
at his farm. Johnson had helped pay for Lindblad and his wife to
emigrate from Sweden, and the bonds of loyalty between the three
were strong.48 O n Sunday a sheriff’s deputy appeared at Lindblad’s
door asking about Johnson, but Lindblad and his wife said the fugi­tive
was not there, when in reality he was hiding in the bant. Inexpli­cably,
the deputy left without searching the grounds. Though the
Kandiyohi County sheriff’s office had to report to Michael 1 loy in
embarrassment about their botched search, Johnson still felt pressure.
As a result, Swedish settlers bundled him in a covered carriage and
drove him to a hiding place in the woods. There he kept out of sight
in the daytime and slept by night in below-zero cold in the shelter of
fallen trees and piles of brush or inside a hollow log. Nighttime
72
George C.[I] Andrews was a prominent merchant in southeast Minneapolis. It was he
who discovered Gust Erickson's frozen body on 27 January 1876. [Note: There is
some confusion with Aitdrews’s middle initial. No George C. Andrews lived in the area
at the time. A George H. Andrews did.] From: Hiding in Plain Sight: Minneapolis’
First Neighborhood (Minneapolis, Minn.: Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Associa­tion,
no date), 68.
73
temperatures plunged to as low as -18" Fahrenheit.49
Under cover of darkness, other Swedish farmers crept into the
forest and gave Johnson food and water for several days, rather than
surrendering him to the authorities. Discovering the fanners’ actions,
John Gunderson, a Scandinavian pastor from the Twin Cities who
was holding religious meetings in Kandiyohi County, became in-censed
at their uncooperative attitude. Gunderson swore out a citizen’s
warrant against Johnson and contacted Minneapolis police, thus giv­ing
away Johnson’s whereabouts. Detective Hoy quickly boarded a
westbound freight train in Minneapolis and was met at the Kandiyohi
station by sheriff's officers with a fresh team of horses.50
His cover blown, Johnson struck out across country on foot.
Though he now lacked food and water, he zigzagged back and forth
and eluded his pursuers for fifteen miles before stopping in exhaus­tion
at the isolated cabin of a lone, aging Swedish pioneer named
Olof Ekdahl, who hid him and gave him his first sustenance in days.51
When Michael Hoy and his men at last caught the trail and entered
Ekdahl’s cabin, Johnson offered no resistance. The officers found him
calmly wanning his feet, which were badly frostbitten and had turned
blue up to the ankles.52
Believing he had a hardened butcher in custody, Hoy brought his
quarry7 back to Minneapolis by the first available afternoon train.
Even then complications arose. The police were surprised to leant
that a crowd of 2,000 people had gathered outside the Minneapolis
police station clamoring for a glimpse of the murderer. Hoy stopped
the train short of the depot and sneaked Johnson into the county jail
through a back door. Frank Johnson was immediately booked and
placed in a cell. He asked simply, “Where is Lindquist.2”53
In C u s t o d y
In the first week of Febniary, Frank Johnson and Swan Lindquist
were taken to Common Pleas Court in Minneapolis and formally
charged with murder. Johnson’s case seemed straightforward, since he
readily admitted to the crime, but Lindquist’s response presented a
more difficult problem. He contended that he took no part in the
killing and that Michael Hoy and Peter Chilstrom had promised him
74
immunity from prosecution if he told them all he knew about the
case. Lindquist claimed the Swedish 'American Chilstrom even prom­ised
to protect him, since Lindquist was a fellow Swede. When l loy
and Chilstrom denied those assertions, the court accepted their state­ments
and chose to deal with Johnson and Lindquist as equal part­ners
in the crime.54
Johnson told his story to officials. In order to avoid being killed,
he came up to Minneapolis on 24 January to have Erickson arrested
and put in jail. On the first day, a Sunday, he and Erickson kept a
guarded peace. As Johnsons stay in Minneapolis lengthened, the
drinking increased and his thoughts of an arrest faded. As a result, on
26 January another plan was hatched, that is, to get Erickson help­lessly
drunk and then attack him. When the three men left the last
streetcar on the fatal evening, they discussed whether to go to a
tavern or back to visit at Tilda Anderson’s house close by, where they
had spent the previous evening.55
Johnson chose a third path instead and led them across the open
field. Even then he said he was of two minds. He continually urged
Swan Lindquist, who was still nursing his broken ann, to stay out of
the way. He also began feeling sorry for Erickson, who could barely
stay on his feet. Then suddenly came the decisive moment and Frank
Johnson hesitated no longer. As he admitted, “We were walking
through some brush and I then made up my mind about killing
Erickson. I know that I did wrong to kill him but I thought I had to
save myself. Swan had no part in the killing.”56
If the confession eased his mind, it could not lessen his physical
pain. In mid-February physicians were called to the jail to amputate
most of Johnson’s frostbitten left foot. After the operation he fell
deathly ill and languished in silence for weeks. Not until early March
did he begin eating solid food again and talking to the Swedish­speaking
officer assigned to help him.57
On 9 March 1876, Johnson and Lindquist were at last arraigned
and given time to consider a plea.58 Unable to understand the En­glish
of the legal system, they now faced a new dilemma: How to
manage their case? Into the breach came the aggressive Minneapolis
law firm of Reynolds and Arctander to take up Lindquist’s defense
and give advice to Johnson. One of the partners was John W. Arctander.
75
Newton H. Winchell, Minnesota State Geologist and University of Minnesota profes­sor.
He observed Erickson, Johnson, and Lindquist cm the night of the murder aitd later
identified them to police. Courtesy of Hennepin History Museum, Minneapolis.
76
At first the prisoners surely saw him as a veritable godsend, since he
spoke Swedish. Indeed he appeared eminently capable of steering a
strong and steady course with the defendants through the unaccus­tomed
legal system.
John W. Arctander had a reputation and past experience as a
defender of the underdog. He was bom in Sweden in 1849, but grew
up in Norway. A precocious student, he graduated from Oslo Uni­versity
at age eighteen. For three years thereafter he worked in Oslo
with the great Norwegian poet and champion of liberty Björnstjerne
Björnson. Doing newspaper work, Arctander aided Björnson in the
struggle for Norwegian independence from that country’s unequal
and unpopular union with Sweden. In the late 1860s, Arctander’s
radical views led to conflicts with the conservative government. Those
disagreements caused him to leave Norway in 1870 in self-imposed
exile. For four years, beginning in 1870, he worked with Scandina-vian-
American newspapers in New York City while also studying law.
In 1874, he arrived in Minnesota and was admitted to the bar.59
By the time of the Erickson killing, Arctander had emerged as a
budding young tri-lingual defense lawyer with immense ambition.
Speaking Swedish, Arctander continued to have unique access to
both of the defendants. He expected Johnson to plead guilty to
murder. He also insisted that he could successfully defend Lindquist
on a plea of not guilty. Arctander stood by both men as they entered
their respective pleas of guilty and not guilty on 11 March. Lindquist’s
murder trial was set for 10 April, and Johnson’s sentencing was de­layed
until the completion of Lindquist’s trial.60
Despite its promising beginning, Arctander’s work with the Swedes
did not run smoothly. Lindquist especially began to wonder about his
counsel’s qualifications. First of all, the lawyer was barely older than
the two defendants themselves and had been in America only two or
three years longer than they. Then Arctander made the inexplicable
mistake of saying that Lindquist’s brother Andrew had hired him to
defend the case. Surprised, Andrew Lindquist answered that he had
never seen or heard of Arctander before the day the lawyer appeared
at the county jail and announced his role as defense counsel for Swan
Lindquist.61
Through March and early April, Arctander reassured his client.
77
Meanwhile the Hennepin County Attorney received the surprisingly
contradictory and puzzling message that both men had now decided
on pleas of not guilty.62 Arctander added to the confusion. He came
to the jail the day before Lindquist’s trial and, according to Swan
Lindquist, explained in excited tones that the State had “changed
the papers” on him suddenly and without warning. Both Johnson and
Lindquist must now plead guilty to second-degree murder, he in ­sisted,
in order to escape the certainty of a death penalty.63
The mention of capital punishment struck fear in the hearts of
both defendants. Johnson had earlier stated that he knew nothing at
all about possible punishments for murder in Minnesota.64 The talk
of hanging was a new concept to him and filled him with panic and
dread. Since he could not read or understand the court’s papers,
Lindquist in turn felt he had no choice but to follow Arctander’s
advice, especially since the attorney now explained that he could get
Lindquist released from prison in six to twelve months with a guilty
plea. Lindquist’s last-minute request to change his plea to guilty was
granted by the judge.65
T he Hennepin County Attorney, who said he knew nothing
about the changing of papers, had prepared for a thorough trial and
was astounded at the new guilty plea. He visited Johnson and Lindquist
in jail before the time set for the trial and tried to reason with them
that a trial was their only chance of seeing justice done, but he could
not overcome their profound fear of death on the gallows. Only
reluctantly did he listen in court the next day as both men were
sentenced to life in prison.66 No trial was held for either defendant.
After waiting over two months in the county jail, the two Swedes
stood in Common Pleas Court on 11 April 1876 and listened as their
fates were sealed.
On 12 April the Hennepin County sheriff delivered Frank Johnson
and Swan Lindquist to Stillwater State Prison. After being checked
in, they were taken to the cellblocks. As they entered their 5’ x 7’
cells, the two felt differing emotions. Frank Johnson, now commonly
known statewide as Johnson the Murderer, accepted his fate and was
thankful to escape hanging. Still, he was visibly shaken. Lindquist,
though likely not fully as ignorant of knowledge about the killing as
he wished the public to believe, continued to say he was innocent of
78
John W. Arctander was Scandinavian bom. A prominent Minnesota attorney and
noted defender of the underdog, he served as defense counsel for S u m Lindquist.
From: Marion D. Shutter and J . S. McLain, editors. Progressive Men of Minne­sota...
(The Minneapolis Journal, Minneapolis, Minn., 1897), 219.
79
murder. He had begun to wonder about the workings of the Law. He
was fast becoming convinced he bad been lied to and badly repre­sented
by the Minneapolis police detective, the County Coroner,
and now his defense counsel. Despite those differences in attitude,
the two men’s sentences were equally final. The State had spoken,
and it intended for Stillwater State Prison to be their home for as
long as they might live.
Me d ia C o v e r a g e
A St. Paul journalist followed the two convicts to Stillwater and
described their introduction to prison life. According to the reporter,
Johnson took his place meekly. It was noticeable that his movement
was limited because the impaired “left leg [was turned] at a right
angle backwards.” Without realizing the nature of his plight, Lindquist
gazed about at his cell “in a vacant, ignorant manner” and nonchalantly
asked a guard for some tobacco. He commented, strangely, that he
had forgotten his own tobacco along with his Bible. The reporter
sarcastically promised readers that the public was now safe. Prison
gates would never open for the two inmates again.0'
The highly judgmental tone of such comments was typical of the
press coverage of the Erickson murder.68 Reporters’ views proved to
be as changeable as they were opinionated. In the early stages of the
police investigation, the graphic newspaper descriptions of the crime
scene were intended tmly to shock the entire state, to a degree that
present-day readers could only find distasteful. It was clear that edi­tors
allowed the violence to be reported in tenns even more garish
than reality would support. Rather than just a murder, this was a
beastly slaughter. Reporters described it as “the fiendish crime,” “the
barbarous butcheries,” and “the literal butchery of a human being.”69
Caught up in the rhetorical frenzy of the English-language press, the
German-American Minneapolis Freie Presse even coined the term
“butcherei” (butchery) to describe the killing.70 Overstated though
such terminology was, it nevertheless brought home the fact that the
crime was bmtal by any standards.
Before Johnson’s and Lindquist’s names were known to the pub­lic,
writers conjured up images of the killers as unimaginable mon­
80
sters. They were conceptualized as “cold-blooded villains,” “fiends in
human shape,” and “human blood hounds.”71 Once Swan Lindquist
was arrested, reporters were clearly surprised, however, to find him a
hamtless-looking youth of only twenty-two “with a very slight and
downy mustache.” Instead, they then imagined his yet-unknown part­ner
as the unspeakable specter. Even though he left tiny footprints in
the snow, the killer must nonetheless be a “merciless butcher,” “a
bloodthirsty wretch,” “a guilty wretch,” or “a thorough coward.”72
T he killers were described, in short, as unsalvageable brutes.
Later, however, the chance to observe the throngs gathered to see
the murderer in handcuffs offered newspapermen an ideal opportu­nity
to add nuances to their pointed descriptions. In judicious temrs,
reporters noticed the absence of a lynch mentality among the masses.
Rather than ntffians, the citizens who gathered on the streets were in
a festive and curious mood and respectfully waited for justice to take
its due course.73
There a contradiction arose. If indeed any bloodlust appeared, it
was in the columns of the newspapers themselves. Even as journalists
praised a patient reliance on the scales of justice, they could not
resist expressing a desire for swift retribution. During the early stages
of the search, the St. Paul Daily Pioneer Press complained that “the law
shields them [murderers] from the gallows.” In that same vein, the
tme sentiments of Minneapolis’s The Daily Evening Mail could hardly
have been misunderstood when it wrote about the murderer: “When
he does arrive the citizens of this city should give him a warm recep­tion.”
Once Johnson and Lindquist were both in custody, another
reporter observed them at close hand and noted, with an undisguised
sense of glee, that “both of the villains seemed filled with a whole­some
fear of hanging.” There was every reason to assume the guilty
parties would be brought to “the gallows which claims them as its
own.” And before Johnson was even indicted, a writer for the The
Daily Evening Mail described him as “one of the worst criminals ever
left unhung [sic].”74
Once Johnson was caught and could be questioned, reporters
had difficulty reconciling the hyperbole of their previous reports with
the sight of the contrite and sorrowful soul he presented. One writer
admitted as much: “He [Johnson] is rather below the medium stature,
81
sandy complexion, not remarkably intelligent, and has a sharp, cold
gray eye. Yet he wouldn’t be singled out among a thousand as a
murderer.”75
During the following two months a noticeable shift in attitudes
occurred. In February, reporters followed Johnson’s amputation and
the resultant life-threatening illness and despondency he suffered with
intense interest, even sympathy. They described his chagrin, embar­rassment,
and agitation when throngs of street urchins and general
rabble as well as noisome, unshaven, and unemployed workers—in
addition to others known condescendingly as “the Scandinavian ele­ment”—
frantically pushed, shoved, elbowed, and even barged their
way into his and Lindquist’s courtroom hearings. Policemen struggled
in vain to hold them in check.76 Reporters were touched to see how,
in his infirmity, officers had to carry Frank Johnson into the court­room
in a blanket. It was equally touching to observe how the judge
allowed him to enter his guilty plea from a sitting position, after he
tried but failed to stand up and answer to charges.77
Seemingly against their will, journalists came to see the killer, in
brief, as a man of feeling. In March writers from the Minneapolis
Journal and the St. Paul Daily Pioneer Press came to interview Johnson
in his jail cell and found him quietly reading and discussing the New
Testament, while a group of pretty girls from a church sang hymns for
him. Fie said he had felt bad since the moment of the killing and
added in broken English: “What could I do or where could I go? I
feel badder now than I ever do.” Fie admitted his lowest moment
had come when he tried to act happy while playing music at the
dance in Kandiyohi.78 In a matter of weeks, Johnson had gone from
being viewed as a devil who defied the Law, in the fomr of Detective
Fioy, and tried to outwit th e gospel, as represented by Pastor
Gunderson, to a man of sensibility, who could carry on a coherent
and civilized conversation.79
By early March reporters had decided Lindquist was the true
villain, one of almost Byzantine proportions, and Johnson only his
unwitting tool. Johnson was indeed the perpetrator but Lindquist the
instigator of the killing. They theorized that Lindquist owed money
to Erickson and so played Johnson and Erickson off against each
other, hoping that through Erickson’s assaults on Johnson he could
82
MURDER MOST FOUL
An Unknown Man Literally Butchered within a short
distance of Isaac McNair’s Residence
His Mutilated Remains Discovered Yesterday by George H. Andrews
St. Paul Daily Pioneer Press
28 January 1876
THAT HORRIBLE MURDER
The Body Identified as That of “Gus Erickson”
A Thief and a Bummer, but Nevertheless a Human Being
St. Paul Pioneer Press
28 January 1876
WELLSON’S MURDER
New and Startling Facts Concern It
Lindquist Confesses His Participation in the Crime
Tells How Johnson, with Premeditation Committed It
The Daily Evening Mail
29 January 1876
SWIFT RETRIBUTION
Overtakes the Murderer Johnson,
After a Two days Skulk in the Woods
Minneapolis Officers Chase Him
Fifteen Miles and Run Him Down
The Daily Evening Mail
3 February 1876
THE MURDERERS
Both of the Murderers Interviewed
The First Statement that Lindquist Has Made Public
He Says that He is Perfectly Innocent and that Hoy and Chilstrom
Offered Him Inducements
And Promised to Clear Him if He Would Tell All He Knew
The Daily Evening Mail
4 February 1876
83
lay hands on Johnson’s money and thereby repay his debt to Erickson.
When that ploy failed, Lindquist, it was decided, planned to have
Johnson murder Erickson. According to that explanation, it was
Lindquist who invented the scheme for Johnson to get Erickson
drunk and then isolate him in a spot where die murder could be
carried out undisturbed. In that way Lindquist could eliminate both
Erickson and Lindquist’s debt to Erickson for good. One newspaper
concluded that Lindquist was more guilty than Johnson, “who would
scarcely have slaughtered his man but for the fiend’s [Lindquist’s]
advice and assistance.”80
At each subsequent court appearance, reporters came increas­ingly
to feel the countenances of the accused men reflected their
inner characters. Johnson showed remorse. “It was impossible to dis­cern
a trace of viciousness in his appearance or conversation,” wrote
one journalist 81 In contrast, Lindquist appeared in court gaudily
dressed in green and brown plaid pants and a red shirt, while turning
a quid of tobacco in his mouth before spitting it out. I le had ex­tremely
dirty hands. Rather than the winning appearance noted by
his early employers, he had a “repulsive and brazen expression in the
eyes, and a coarse mouth.”82 One journalist described him as being
as “expressionless as a side of beef’ and wondered that one so young
could be so hardened in crime.83 Lindquist seemed indifferent to the
gaze of the packed courtroom and smiled distractedly at lawyers’
comments. In reporters’ views, Swan Lindquist was either completely
unaware of the seriousness of the charges against him or supremely
and unwisely confident he could beat them.84
By mid-March differences between the defendants were fully de­lineated,
in the eyes of reporters. Lindquist remained stolid and indif­ferent,
while Johnson had “the more conscience of the two” and the
full sympathy of the spectators in court. Even at their sentencing
Johnson “manifested considerable feeling,” but Lindquist’s face was
said to remain cold and expressionless.85 Differences also appeared at
various times when the two men were allowed to meet and converse
in the county jail. Reporters noted then that Lindquist turned away
from the milder mannered Johnson and either refused to address him
or turned again to face him and initiated a round of bitter accusa­tions
between them.86
84
Journalists were nothing if not inconsistent. Lingering always in
the back of their minds was the feeling that Johnson and Lindquist
both were malicious, even as the reporters could be in the process of
shifting opinions back and forth in favor of one defendant over the
other. The suspicions of shared evil were reinforced when an anony­mous
Swede in Minnesota told a reporter the following curious tale:
A gentleman from Sweden, who is well acquainted with
the characteristics of the people inhabiting that portion of
Sweden from whence came Erickson and his murderers,
Johnson and Lindquist, tells us that the neighborhood where
all three of them grew up is noted for its bloodthirstiness, and
that stabbing, throat-cutting and similar amusements are fre­quently
enjoyed by a crowd, who think it no more harm to
stand by and see one man cut the jugular of another than it
would be to witness the animal Christmas hog-killing. Reared
in a locality like this, no wonder Lindquist stood by and saw
Johnson almost sever the head of Erickson. Doubtless he
thought there was little or no crime in his being present.87
Whether the newspaper’s editor passed such information on to
readers in good faith or blatantly published it in the interests of
sensationalism, it was a provocative report that demanded close scmtiny
and some investigative reporting. Unfortunately, both were lacking,
and the report was allowed to stand unquestioned.
The most straightforward present-day response to the published
item is that the parts of Skaraborg the three Swedes came from were
quiet fanning communities whose inhabitants in general would have
been as shocked in 1876 by the Erickson murder as were the people
of Minnesota. Until the last decades of the nineteenth century, how­ever,
there existed a common and controversial custom of knife
fighting {knivslagsmdl) in parts of southwestern Sweden, to which the
informant was likely referring. It may have grown from the habit of
village fights, in which youths from different settlements in Sweden
engaged in fistfights. By lighting, each group attempted to establish
its villages supposed superiority over rival villages.
Ritualized knife fighting roughly paralleled the village fighting
85
custom. Alcohol consumption was a common element in the con­frontations.
Knife fighting could be between groups, or it might result
from individual or family vendettas. Some attacks were ambushes on
roadways against travelers. Turning out lights in a room or a drinking
establishment and cutting an adversary under the cover of darkness
was a common ploy. Otherwise it was not unknown for men to fight
one-on-one with drawn knives. Often the blades were ground down
to only an inch or less in length. So the purpose was not to kill but to
mark one’s opponent permanently with a knife scar from chin to ear.
Men who were unlucky in such fights bore the so-called Frillesås-scar
(Frillesåsmärket) on their faces or necks for life.88 Such struggles brought
dangerous weapons into play and could be hotly contested. They
might also be witnessed by large groups of rowdy spectators or acted
out in private.
In such settings serious injuries or even deaths could occur. De­spite
that fact, there was no question of sanctioned murder, as sug­gested
by the Minnesota newspaper’s informant. Combatants were
indeed commonly taken to court and punished under Swedish law
for their offenses. Some men avoided the courts by escaping to
America, while others were marked by the victims’ friends or family
members in retaliation.89 To this day there is disagreement among
folklorists and historians about the extent arid frequency of knife
fighting customs in various Swedish provinces, but it is clear that
knife fighting was common in southwestern Sweden, including parts
of Västergötland.90 Where it existed, it would often have been prac­ticed
by younger men or known troublemakers.
In directly associating knife fighting traditions with Frank Johnson’s
method of killing Gust Erickson, the informant and the newspaper
were incautious. The difficulty in making such a connection would
arise in ascertaining how much, if anything, Johnson knew about
knife fighting and what his thoughts were as he knifed Erickson to
death. The Minneapolis newspaper made no attempt to verify the
accuracy of its informant’s statement or to question Johnson and
Lindquist in jail about their familiarity with knife fighting traditions
in Sweden. Instead of a shortened blade, Frank Johnson carried a
long razor sharp hunting knife in 1876, and all indications were that
he intended not to mark and scar Erickson for life but to end his life
86
once and for all. There appeared to be no ritual involved, only a
swift, deadly, and definitive attack. Nonetheless, to some Swedes in
Minnesota the fact that Johnson attacked Gust Erickson in the dark
and cut him across the throat from ear to ear may have been remind-ful
of knife fighting customs the immigrants knew from Sweden. That
Johnson started to leave after cutting Erickson but then turned and
came back to the scene of the crime might also have reminded
native Swedes of the tendency among some knife fighters of return­ing
to inspect the injury they had inflicted on their adversaries.
The American journalists failed to delve into Swedish practices.
Their lack of critical thinking in presenting such a story paralleled
further variances in reporting on the Erickson murder. At times Johnson
and Lindquist could be classified as calculating, individualistic, and
cold-blooded killers. A t other times they were seen as socially condi­tioned
products of a brutal environment. Did they act out of their
own unbridled volition? Or were they, in a way they had little control
over, socially predisposed to violence by the stmcture of the society
in which they grew up? Naturally, those and other explanations of
the factors that motivated them conflicted with one another. That
conflict persisted in the pages of newspapers throughout die period of
the legal investigation into the case. Against that background an­other
daily paper wondered, in raw temis, if it was at all possible for
attorneys to build a justifiable case in the Swedes’ defense:
Lindquist, the murderer Johnson’s “audience” at the time
he cut the throat of Erickson, is to be defended by Arctander
and Reynolds, who it is needless to say will do their best to
save the fellow’s neck. W h e th e r the circumstances that
Lindquist comes from, that wild section of Sweden where it is
not considered a crime to stand by and see a man kill an­other,
is [sic] to be of service in his case, remains to be seen.91
Such colorful descriptions were plentiful in the press, but dispassion­ate
analysis remained rare. Confusion grew.
By the time Johnson and Lindquist entered their pleas, the press
had created an impenetrable jumble of exaggerated and contradic­tory
claims that defied all attempts by the general public to make art
87
objective evaluation of the mentality and motivation of the two
Swedes. What were they: Hardened, nihilistic offenders? Automatons
conditioned to violence? Or simply disoriented immigrants?
Certainly, the suggestion that they may have been young, way­ward
single men isolated irom family, social, or church groups and
influenced by bad company was never considered by the popular
press. By the time Johnson and Lindquist were delivered to the State
Prison in mid-April, newspapers surrendered their attempts at a thor­ough
and satisfactory explanation and took the path of least resis­tance.
They relegated the Swedes once more to equal status as “the
human butchers,” capable only of creating chaos and causing moral
outrage.92 In that view, the people of Minnesota were well rid of
them.
As with all sensational media events, the furor created by The
Murder subsided with time. With Johnson and Lindquist reduced to
faceless numbers in the Stillwater convict population after 1876,
reporters moved on to other topics. In 1907, when a Minneapolis
Tribune staff member contacted the Stillwater Prison warden and
blithely asked for an interview with the oldest convict at the peniten­tiary,
it was clear nobody in the Twin Cities newspaper world had any
memory of the Erickson murder and its perpetrator(s). The reporter
received only lukewami encouragement from the warden and did
not follow up on the assignment.93 As early as March 1876, however,
one Minneapolis daily had predicted that details of the case would
not quickly die in the minds of the public.94 That opinion was to
prove at least partly prophetic.
T h e ir Fa t e s
The story of the three Swedish immigrants did not end when
Stillwater’s prison gates closed on Frank Johnson and Swan Lindquist.
For years their fate continued to reverberate poignantly—among
those who were still listening—with controversy, resignation, and
defeat, and a brave struggle for self-realization.
In a bizarre turn of events, Gust Erickson fared as badly in death
as he had in life. After he died, Minneapolis authorities reviewed his
record. He had no relatives in America and at the time of death
lacked employment and a permanent residence. As a result, the city
declared Erickson a pauper and looked for economical ways to fi­nance
his burial. Only a few options were open.
In mid-February the body was taken from the funeral home
where it had been identified earlier to historic Layman’s Cemetery in
the heart of south Minneapolis’s strongest Scandinavian neighbor­hood.
The cemetery’s proprietor, Martin Layman, who claimed he
had been a friend of Erickson, offered to bury him. Before that could
be done, however, the Coroner’s Office sold Erickson’s body to the
University of Minnesota medical school, whose students immediately
set about dissecting the cadaver. The medical school eventually sent
a box containing Erickson’s dissected remains back to Layman.
Layman was shocked to find the box held only Erickson’s clothes
cut into pieces, a pail containing his internal organs, and numerous
strips of his flesh and other body parts. The medical students also put
the bodies of two cats in the container along with the human re­mains.
They had tied the cats’ legs together and killed them by
cutting their throats from ear to ear in a grotesque imitation of
Johnson’s murder of Erickson.95 Erickson’s remains were interred by
the City of Minneapolis a month after his death, but only, as one
reporter commented, “after having been re-murdered and rehashed
by a party of medical students.”96
The questionable treatment of Erickson’s remains sparked a lively
debate in the press over the rights of the dead. The arguments
ranged from angry charges of body snatching to enlightened discus­sions
of the relative need for post-mortem examinations in order to
further scientific research. Under threat of a lawsuit, officials finally
disinterred Erickson’s remains and removed the offensive items from
the casket. Wha t little was left of Gust Erickson was at last re­buried.
9' There was no word about how his family in Sweden learned
of Gust Erickson’s death. In the end, Coroner Chilstrom suffered the
greatest opprobrium. He exited the Erickson case in late March 1876
under charges that he kept for his own purposes the money earned
from the sale of Erickson’s body.98
The controversy surrounding the mental makeup of Erickson’s
murderer ceased after Frank Johnson entered Stillwater Prison. De­spite
his truncated foot, Johnson eventually became physically fit and
89
able to work regularly in the prison shops. His mental state deterio-rated
rapidly, on the other hand. The journalists’ not altogether inac­curate
pre-sentencing portrait of Johnson as a civil man of co n ­science
gave way in prison to the sad and irreversible image of a
convict with no hope, no opinions, and nobody to live for. Tha t
tendency began early in his prison career and worsened steadily.
One warden even expressed the opinion that Johnson had always
been weak of mind, that is, from birth."
Through the rest of the 1870s, Johnson was wracked with guilt.
He maintained that Swan Lindquist was innocent of any crime and
blamed himself for Lindquist’s incarceration. That attitude caused
prison officials to wonder even more about Johnson’s fragile mental
state. Their concern heightened in 1880, when a Minneapolis attor­ney
interviewed Johnson in prison concerning Lindquist’s role in the
murder. Johnson gave a calm, sensible report of the happenings of
1876, but when asked a few days later to verify his statements he was
too troubled to do so. The attorney wrote:
He [Frank Johnson] brooded over these things so much
and became so despondent that he imagined he was going to
be hung [sic] because he was guilty. It required the strongest
assurances to the contrary and the utmost endeavors of the
officers and chaplain to keep him from entirely losing his
m in d .100
As the years crept by, Johnson grew more deranged and his
irrational fear of hanging increased. In the early 1900s, the warden’s
office reported that he told the same “remarkable story” of his past in
Minneapolis over and over again year after year, even to staff who
had no recollection of his crime.101
While his mind failed, a few friends stood by him. John Lindblad
of Kandiyohi visited him at the prison in the early years and wrote
letters occasionally. Lindblad remained firm in the belief that Johnson
killed Erickson in self-defense because of a quarrel over Tilda Ander­son
and money. Lie unsuccessfully circulated petitions for Johnson to
be pardoned, but by 1900 Lindblad stopped visiting him and ended
their contact, for unexplained reasons. Johnson’s siblings in Skaraborg
90
wrote to him until they passed away. By 1920, only an aged sister was
left in Sweden.102
To the world at large Johnson was a forgotten man. After the
World War I era, the State Board of Control considered him for
parole several times. The Board decided on each occasion that he
would be harmless in civilian life. However, he would likely be un­able
to support himself. One Board member wrote that he was “of
the type that does not live, simply exists.” In conclusion, the Board
reported that Johnson did not want to leave the institution and freely
said so. The prison was his only home. He had no desire to start
anew.103
In 1917, the Stillwater prison physician wrote of Johnson: “He is,
to all practicable purposes, insane.” He had two nephews in South
Dakota. Wh en asked if he wished to see them, Johnson replied
indifferently that he would not know a relative from any other stranger.
In 1923, the prison physician reported again: “He cannot give a
rational account of himself or any of his relatives.”104
In that state, Frank Johnson watched the decades pass by. He sat
alone in his cell reading Swedish-American newspapers.105 He surely
appeared as a curiosity to the younger inmates and new staff alike. By
1920, no one at the prison, either employee or prisoner, had been on
the scene when he arrived there over forty years earlier. Many who
had been present were now long since deceased. Nor did any mem­bers
of the Board of Control have first-hand memories of the crime
he had committed. He remained a docile inmate, who asked n o th ­ing,
wanted nothing, and gave nothing. He had lost everything—his
family, his acquaintances, his girlfriend, his freedom, and his dignity.
He entertained no illusions about getting them back. His dreams
were dead.
Frank Johnson grew up on a farm and lived for twenty-five years
in Sweden, spent three years in Minnesota, and then entered into a
state of limbo. In 1876, he told his jailers in Minneapolis that he had
no will to live any longer.106 After that he spent the better part of
five decades in prison waiting to die. In 1922, he grew weak and was
sent to the prison hospital, where he spent nearly a year. He died
there quietly on 30 May 1923. Through the warden’s office his sur­viving
sister in Sweden, now over eighty, had been notified earlier of
91
his illness, but she did not reply.107
His nephews in South Dakota told the prison warden to bury
Frank in Stillwater. They were too busy to help with final arrange­ments
or to attend the funeral, but they asked how they could obtain
the money their uncle had accumulated in his prison earnings ac­count.
The warden answered only that the inmate was given a re­spectful
Christian burial. Johnson’s funds were turned over to the
probate court.108 The only expression of sorrow came in a letter from
the now seventy-eight-year-old John Lindblad, who wrote of Johnson’s
helpful nature as a young man and repeated his belief that Johnson
killed Gust Erickson in self-defense. Lindblad had trouble hiding his
feeling that Erickson got what he deserved in 1876.109
Frank Johnson died after forty-six years, one month, and eigh­teen
days at Stillw-ater State Prison. His time there still stands as the
longest sentence ever served in the Minnesota prison system, a dubi­ous
distinction.110
The only happy ending to this story belonged to Swan Lindquist.
As with Frank Johnson, Lindquist’s reputation changed in prison
from that spread about him in the media before his incarceration.
Fortunately for Lindquist, his image improved with time. Instead of
keeping the vacant, ignorant look attributed to him as he entered his
cellblock in 1876, Lindquist immediately made an intelligent deci­sion.
He chose to forget his anger at being deceived by the authori­ties
and adopted a positive approach to prison life. He was deter­mined
to start afresh. Tha t attitude required great courage, but it
helped to save him.
Lindquist became a paint stripper and decorator in the prison
industries and learned the trade well. T h a t was facilitated by the
encouragement of his guards, who believed he was innocent of mur­der
and expected his stay at Stillwater to be short. Lindquist also
made a concerted effort to leam English. He read nearly two h u n ­dred
books from the prison library.111 Beginning in the late 1870s he
used his new-found English language skills to argue his case with
State officials. In 1880, numerous citizens of Minneapolis joined his
cause. Lindquist’s fomrer employers wrote letters attesting to his su­perior
work record, his honesty, and his high intelligence. His super­visors
at the prison also praised his industry and reliability at work.112
92
In 1882, fifty-seven Swedish-American men in Minneapolis signed a
petition requesting a pardon for Lindquist.113 Those efforts led a Twin
Cities law firm to reopen his case. Those who knew him before
prison blamed bad company for his trouble and believed he could be
relied on to avoid such companions in the future.
In 1881, Governor J. S. Pillsbury denied the first request for a
pardon for Lindquist. Pillsbury was noted for his hard line on crime
and offenders. He granted few pardons and made even fewer conces­sions
on social issues. Still, those working for Lindquist did not give
up. In 1882, the testimonials gathered by the law finn ended up on
the desk of Pillsbury’s successor, Governor L. L. Hubbard. Hubbard
looked favorably on the 1882 petition and commuted Lindquist’s
sentence to ten years. With credit for good conduct, his time was
reduced to eight years. Lindquist left Stillwater Prison without fanfare
on 16 August 1884.1,4
On his own behalf, he had said, while still behind bars: “If I can
have my freedom, I will live a steady, honest and useful life, and be a
man. I was nothing but a boy when I came here.”115 Swan Lindquist
lived up to that promise. He returned to Minneapolis and joined his
brother Andrew’s express delivery' service, which they ran together
successfully for thirty-five years. In 1885, Swart Lindquist married a
Norwegian immigrant woman. They had four children. Swan retired
from business in 1920 and passed away on 9 March 1936, at age
eighty-two.116
He lived out his life in the heart of the Scandinavian neighbor­hood
on the West Bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.117
From his home he had a view across to the East Bank, in the direc­tion
of the University of Minnesota and Dinkytown, where his sober­ing
encounter with the Law began so many years before. He had time
to think back on those events. A t his death the murder of Gust
Erickson was sixty years in the past and his own release from prison a
fifty-two-year-old memory. The marshland where Gust Erickson met
his death was now a residential neighborhood. By sheer dint of per­sonal
initiative, responsible behavior, and the help of right-minded
citizens, Swan Lindquist beat the odds and lived a productive life.
There is no record that he had any contact with Frank Johnson after
he left Stillwater Prison.
93
Others who were involved in events surrounding the Erickson
murder got on with their lives in various ways after 1876. Detective
Michael Hoy built a colorful career in police work. In 1873, he
became Minneapolis’s first and only detective. His controversial pur­suit
of Frank Johnson in 1876' was done without budgetary support
from the City and went beyond Hoy’s legal jurisdiction. Similar dar­ing
moves in later years made him a favorite of journalists but caused
further controversy and difficulties for Hoy with government officials.
Nonetheless, he rose to be chief of police and chief of detectives in
Minneapolis. lit 1887, he became a member of Minnesota’s Board of
Police Commissioners.118
The public service career of Coroner Peter O. Chilstrom was
short. Charges that he kept funds from the sale of Gust Erickson’s
body were never proven, but he soon left the coroner’s position.
Thereafter he worked as an attorney in Minneapolis until 1880,
whereupon his name faded from the records.119
John W. Arctander continued his law practice and became promi­nent
in the Minnesota legal community. He served on an important
committee that finalized the Minnesota law code. Arctander trans­lated
the law code to Norwegian and Swedish and published both
translations for the aid of Scandinavian immigrants. He served in
numerous important statewide legal posts. Later in life he also gained
recognition as a novelist. 11 is name as a defender of the underdog did
not extend far beyond Swan Lindquist’s sentencing, however. Despite
his earlier promises to get Lindquist released from his sentence, he
abandoned Lindquist’s cause swiftly and had no contact with his
client in prison. Neither did he play any role in the drive to have
Lindquist pardoned. Arctander later moved to Seattle and died there
in 1920.120
Andrew Lindquist remained in Minneapolis. Like Swan Lindquist,
he married a Norwegian immigrant woman and had a family. He
died itt 1924.121
Tilda Anderson stayed in Minneapolis and worked as a domestic
servant until the early 1880s, after which time she faded from the
official records. There is no indication that she had any contact with
Frank Johnson after his arrest and conviction.122
94
C o n c l u s io n
The Erickson murder was an exceptional case of abuse, fear,
misunderstanding, and violence. It was complicated by underlying
conflicts and uncertainties in the Swedish immigrant experience. In
their aftermath, those troubles offered the Swedish-American com­munity
and greater Minnesota ample food for thought.
Several aspects of the Erickson case invite discussion. One is the
immigrants’ state of uprootedness. There can be no doubt that Gust
Erickson, Frank Johnson, and Swan Lindquist were adrift in a foreign
culture in the mid-1870s. In Minnesota they had relatives or friends
and acquaintances from home. There were shared customs and memo­ries
from their native province to fall back on. Those facts did little,
however, to cushion them from the challenges involved in confront­ing
American culture.
Problems of some magnitude arose, which Erickson, Johnson,
and Lindquist lacked the previous cultural exposure and educational
background to deal with. Their experiences illustrated the difficul­ties.
Before immigration, they had spent their lives in small mono-cultural
mral settlements that exerted strict controls over individual
behavior. Every action of each individual in Bitterna, which con­sisted
of only a couple hundred farmsteads, would have taken place
under the watchful eye of family, neighbors, and parish pastors.
As arms of the Swedish government, clergymen in the State
Church were required to make regular I Iousehold Examinations and
record the spiritual and secular state of each parish resident. Parishio­ners
often resented such visits as an invasion of privacy. Yet the
examinations effectively created a record of each person’s habits
through the years, which local officials kept close tabs on. All of­fenses,
major or minor, were duly recorded and used to judge indi­vidual
behavior.123
In addition, the rural community in Sweden was a conformist
society. Youth were expected to follow in the footsteps of their par­ents
and older siblings. Social mobility was restricted. Individuals
worked alongside, had children with, and married others of their own
social class. Controls over social behavior patterns were, therefore,
often peer-related. Being nonconformist meant living outside the
95
collective experience, a chancy proposition at best. Farmland was
marginal and job opportunities limited in rural areas. Thus reliance
on and cooperation with the local parish group was essential to
survival. Ideas of rugged individualism and self-help, so common in
England and America at the time, were foreign concepts to rural
Swedish working people.
The group cared for and nurtured individuals. Even if Frank
Johnson was more mentally challenged than his siblings, the commu­nity
had a place for him. Likewise, Gust Erickson’s wayward tenden­cies
could be held in check by the constant observation of local
people, n o t the least of whom were his own companions. Signifi­cantly,
there were no negative marks on Frank Johnson’s or Gust
Erickson’s records before they left Bitterna.
In Minneapolis, the immigrants encountered an urban environ­ment
with fewer grassroots controls. Seemingly overnight, they were
transported to a world in which it was possible to abandon oneself to
a moveable feast of tempting activities, with no interested neighbors
sitting in immediate judgment. They were young, single workingmen
in a city of striking contrasts. Church life and steady work hours were
juxtaposed to tavern culture and city nightlife. They also met a
steady influx of new ethnic groups as well as clearly marked eco­nomic
differences.
The diversity of languages and cultural patterns was immense, as
were the extremes of wealth and poverty. The mansions of the rich
stood out in contrast to the hovels of the poor. Unlike the limits of
their prescribed place in society in Skaraborg, the newcomers’ choices
multiplied exponentially in America. The relaxation of social con­trols
could offer a new sense of freedom, which could be deceiving. It
also allowed those who were so inclined the chance to nurse resent­ment
at the authoritarian societal structures they recalled from Swe­den.
Moreover, working-class men of Erickson, Johnson, and Lindquist’s
status were part of a minority street culture, unknown to them in
Skaraborg, which offered the freedom to mix with individuals from
all parts of the world. Those contacts surely broadened their hori­zons.
They learned different approaches to problem solving and got
ready tips about job opportunities. At the same time, they met up
96
with dangerous temptations. Street gangs and crime were common.
Gust Erickson was doubtless only one of many who fell victim to the
negative sides of urban street life in America.
Young immigrants moved often and interacted with mainstream
American culture only tangentially, that is, at work or in contact
with public offices. Some of those contacts were less than happy.
There can be no doubt that discrimination was common. Irish youths
tormented Swan Lindquist in his attempt to further his education,
and journalists openly ridiculed Frank Johnson’s broken English in
the press.124 Not having English as their native tongue and possessing
no trade skills, they were at the bottom of the salary scale on any job
and likely to be given the most dangerous tasks. The Swedes cannot
have helped noticing the Americans’ woeful ignorance of their home
country and the tendency to lump all working-class immigrants to­gether
in convenient categories, regardless of their national origins.
For instance, reporters did not bother to find the locations and names
of Erickson’s, Johnson’s, and Lindquist’s home areas, even when alleg­ing
that murderous tendencies originated there. Americans clearly
saw the Swedes as a strange foreign element. Even those reporters
with a certain level of sophistication could not figure the correct
linguistic way of referring to them.
The fact that Swedish-American readers could be incensed at
such neglect was reflected in a letter to the editor of The Daily
Evening Mail in 1876. An anonymous Swedish American chastised
the paper for using the word Swede as both a noun and an adjective.
Frank Johnson was, for example, a Swedish man, not a “Swede man,”
and an adult Swedish female was not a “Swede girl.” The writer of
this letter found such mistakes to be common in both speaking and
writing.
He had even more serious complaints. He berated newsmen for
their thoughtless treatment, in print, of immigrants from Sweden. It
was tme, he allowed, that Erickson’s murder was horrible, but “an
ignorant, brutal man should be pitied more than scorned.” If unedu­cated
Swedes committed murder, the press corps should have at least
as much empathy for them, the writer argued, as for native-born
Americans who committed equally serious crimes. In short, the writer
contended that there was a need for American reporters to give a
97
balanced presentation of the Swedish nation, which would include
not only news of its wrongdoers but also accounts of the country’s
internationally known heads of state, engineers, artists, and scien-tists.
125 Such calls for fairness fell on deaf ears of Minnesota journalists
assigned to the Erickson case.
Sympathetic Americans existed, of course, especially in the
ranks of fanners and small business owners who employed the new-coiners.
Yet the awareness that they were immigrant workers without
a firm foothold in American society was never absent from the minds
of the larger community. No urban ghetto in early Minnesota sur­passed
in size and activity drat, on Washington Avenue in Minneapo­lis,
where Gust Erickson and the Lindquist brothers lived and worked
in the 1870s.126 Men of all stripes came and went in a ceaseless
flow—the employed and unemployed, boarding house residents and
homeless, draymen and loiterers, lawless and law abiding. All passed
by, under the watchful eye of the police.
If at first it escaped their attention that they were on the lower
rungs of the social ladder, immigrants had only to glance at the far
end of Washington Avenue, where the upscale Barge’s Restaurant
stood. Barge’s published a daily listing in the St. Paul and Minneapo­lis
newspapers of all its prominent dinner guests. Executives, busi­nessmen,
clergy, doctors, judges, and lawyers marked their superior
social standing by being seen there. T h a t was a world to which
common immigrants had no access.127
Strict social distinctions were, of course, even more prevalent in
Sweden than in Minnesota. The remembered lack of social mobility
at home was a sore point for many immigrant Swedes. It was not
surprising, therefore, if they bridled under class divisions in their new
homeland or experienced their own working-class voice in commu­nity
affairs, vis-a-vis that of the English-language populace, as being
less than influential. Those ill feelings could manifest themselves at
critical junctures. When the police searched for Frank Johnson in
Kandiyohi in 1876, the Twin Cities press assured its readers that the
Swedish settlers there were as eager as all other Minnesotans to see
the (alleged) murderer captured.128 It cannot have been an accident,
however, th a t those very settlers were at th a t moment in reality
defying the law by aiding Johnson in his flight from the authorities.
98
At a point when one of their social class arid national group was
facing a desperate crisis, many felt they had little reason to support
representatives of the American establishment against a peer from
home.
In addition, many immigrants’ inherent, longstanding distmst of
the clergy was surely at the root of their dissatisfaction with Pastor
Gunderson. Disgruntled that Swedish Americans would not give away
Johnson’s hiding place in Kandiyohi, Gunderson did so himself. The
fact that Gunderson sided with the authorities, which he in tmth
could not be officially blamed for, must have been a bitter reminder
for some Minnesota Swedes of oppressive Old World connections
between church and state. Gunderson’s reputation among many Swed-ish-
American commonfolk plummeted even further when it was re-vealed
that he had issued threats against John Lindblad’s wife in
Kandiyohi and then later applied for and received a monetary reward
from the Minneapolis city government for aiding in the capture of
Barge’s Restaurant. This fashionable restaurant stood at the corner o f Second Avenue
South and Washington Avenue in the 1870s. Courtesy of Hennepin History Mu­seum
, Minneapolis.
99
Frank Johnson.129 America was the Promised Land for workers, but it
also offered second thoughts for those who kept a keen eye out for
the inequities around them. The Erickson murder presented numer­ous
reminders of that reality.
The case had its encouraging sides for Swedish Americans as
well. It showed the importance of people with enlightened, humani­tarian
views and emphasized the solidarity within their ranks. If not
for those who stood by Swan Lindquist, he might have wasted away
in prison much as Frank Johnson did. Likewise, the ever-shifting
kaleidoscope of American life presented opportunities. Andrew and
Swan Lindquist were two who saw their way clear and created suc­cessful
business careers. They proved that upward social mobility was
not a myth in America.
The general public in 1876 was also forced to reconsider its own
prejudices carefully. Immigrants were poor and different in their lan­guage
and habits. They lived apart from the mainstream. Was the
Erickson murder, therefore, just another inevitable case of one poor
minority member killing another, as is common in segregated societ­ies?
Journalists wavered between presenting the public with that de­pressing
image or coming to terms with the discovery that Johnson
the Murderer was also a person, whose thoughts and reactions de­served
to be understood. As Frank Johnson and Swan Lindquist went
off to prison, society at large was left with the question, still unre­solved
in our day, of how to reconcile ingrained societal revenge
motives with ideas of humane treatment of offenders.
The Erickson murder may now seem a forgotten drama. As a
topic of daily general conversation, it was dead long before Swan
Lindquist or Frank Johnson passed away. Yet the story remains rel­evant.
The assimilation of newcomers to the majority culture was a
major issue in the story. The key positive factors were a combination
of fair and honest treatment, collective loyalty, clearly defined per­sonal
goals, individual initiative, and the ability to bear up under
pressure. The combination was many layered, like the skins of the
figurative onion. The failure to reach an understanding of that cohe­sive
combination spelled doom for Gust Erickson and Frank Johnson.
They lacked the time, and perhaps the personal insight, to delve
below the first layer of impressionistic responses to the new society.
100
By way of contrast, Swan Lindquist realized the need for adapta­tion
in America. He left behind the resentment some of his fellow
immigrants felt and adjusted to his new situation. His way of intelli­gently
maneuvering through difficulties by the process of trial and
error and finally gaining acceptance stands as a microcosm for the
approach of the Swedish-American community in general. Assimila­tion
did not come easily or at once. Numerous problems had to be
overcome one precious step at a time.
If Swan Lindquist’s experiences were at all representative, it could
take newcomers years to find their permanent place in American
society. In the long run, the rewards matched the effort each indi­vidual
put into the process of adaptation. Those who most sensibly
interpreted and dealt with their situation succeeded best. Behind the
sensationalism of the Erickson murder lay that valuable lesson about
the long, sometimes painful path of immigrant assimilat ion into Ameri­can
society.
En d n o t e s
1. “Wellson’s Murder,” The Daily Evening Mail (DEM), Minneapolis, 29
January 1876; “The Murderers,” DEM, 4 February 1876; “The Bloody Pair,” The
St. Paul Daily Pioneer Press (SPDPP), 5 February 1876.
2. “Wellson’s Murder,” DEM; “The Murder Case,” DEM, 31 January 1876.
3. “The Murder,” The Minneapolis Tribune (MT), 30 January 1876; “The
Murder Case,” DEM.
4. “Wellson’s Murder,” DEM; “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876.
5. “That Horrible Murder,” SPDPP, 29 January 1876; “The Murder Case,”
DEM.
6. “The Murder Case,” DEM.
7. Ibid.
8. “The Murder,” MT, 4 February 1876; “The Murderers,” DEM.
9. “Caught at Last,” SPDPP, 4 February 1876; “The Murder,” MT, 4 Febru­ary
1876; “The Murderers,” DEM.
10. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist. State of Minnesota, County of Washington, 26 March,
1880, p. 4. Governors Files (2). Minnesota State Archives, Minnesota Historical
Society, St. Paul.
11. “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876; “The Murder Case,” DEM; “The
Murder,” Minneapolis Journal (MJ), 4 February 1876.
101
12. Bitterna. Skaraborgs län. Husförhörslängd 1853-1860. Karla, p. 60.
Bitterna. Skaraborgs län. Husförhörslängd 1865-1873. Karla östergård, p. 85.
Front Arkiv Digital, Falkenberg, Sweden. The farm was described in Swedish as
a “1/4 mantal.”
13. “The Erickson Murder,” SPDPP, 30 January 1876; Deposition of Swan
Lindquist, pp. 2-3.
14- G u s ta f Eriksson, Emigranten Populär, 1783-1951, EmiHamn,
Ancestry.com.
15. “That Horrible Murder,” SPDPP.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. James Matson, Svea, Minn., to Warden, Minnesota State Prison, 23 June
1923. Frank Jolmson Case File. Stillwater State Prison Folder. Minnesota State
Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
19. Bitterna. Skaraborgs län. Husförhörslängd 1853-1860. Tolanda, p. 12.
Arkiv Digital. The phrase “owner and cultivator” was “ägare och bmkare” in
Swedish. The farm was described in Swedish as “1/8 mantal."
20. “The Murderers,” DEM.
21. Wester Bitternas Socken. Husförhörs längd för Väster Bitterna Socken
åren 1865-1873. Tolanda östra rote, p. 92. Arkiv Digital.
22. In- och Utflyttnings-längd för Bitterna Socken. Från och med år 1872
till och med år 1897. In- och Utflyttnings-längd för Bitterna Församling 1872, p.
1. Arkiv Digital.
23. Ibid.; Svante Johnsson, Emigranten Populär, 1783-1951, EmiHamn,
Ancestry.com; Johan Johansson, Emigranten Populär,1783-1951, EmiHamn,
Ancestry.com.
24- The three brothers went through no official, legal name change in
Minnesota. The biggest landowner in Bitterna parish was a family named
Lindblad. The Jonasson brothers appear to have arbitrarily chosen the name of
Lindquist as a variant of Lindblad.
25. Stillwater State Prison Convict Record, p. 432. Stillwater State Prison
Folder. Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
26. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for Pardon
of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 1. Deposition of Moses Stoddard. In the
Matter of the Application for Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 15 May 1880, p. 2.
27. Deposition of J. B. Bassett. In the Matter of the Application for Pardon
of Swan Lindquist, 14 April 1880, p. 1.
28. “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876; “The Murderers,” DEM.
29. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 3.
30. “Wellson’s Murder,” DEM.
102
31. Frank Johnson född 1847-09-10. Profile of Fredrik Johannesson/Frank
Johnson, 1847-1873. Compiled by Svenska Emigrant institutet, Växjö, Sweden.
In possession of the author.
32. Deposition of Frank Johnson. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 3.
33. Stillwater State Prison Convict Record, p. 431. Stillwater State Prison
Folder. Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul; “Caught at Last,” SPDPP, 4
February 1876; Physical Condition Reports. Vol. A-C, 1875-1905. Stillwater
State Prison Folder. Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul. Tire prison Physi­cal
Condition Reports showed that Frank Johnson stood just under 5’ 4”. He was
in fact 5’ 3 5/8” tall and weighed 134 pounds.
34- Frank Johnson född 1847-09-10, pp. 4-5; In- och Utflyttnings-längd för
Bitterna moder Församling, 1873, p. 4; E Johannesson, New York Passenger Lists,
1820-1957, two pages, Ancestry.com.
35. In- och Utflyttnings-längd för Bitterna moder Lörsamling, 1873, pp. 3-4-
36. Deposition of Frank Johnson. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, March 26, 1880, p. 1; “Caught at Last,” SPDPP.
37. Hennepin County Naturalization Records, Index, Vol. 9; SAM 43, Roll
5, Code 15, pp. 392-93, Vol. 4, Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
38. Deposition of Frank Johnson. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 2.
39. “Wellson’s Murder,” DEM.
40. Ibid.; “The Erickson Murder,” SPDPP.
41. “Murder!” MT, 28 January 1876; “Murder Most Foul,” SPDPP, 28 Janu­ary
1876; “Mord auf Der Ostseite,” Minneapolis Freie Presse (MFP), 15 February
1876.
42. “That Horrible Murder,” SPDPP.
43. Ibid.; “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876; “Mord auf Der Ostseite,”
MFP; Nordstjeman (New York), 11 February 1876.
44- “The Murder Case,” DEM.
45. “The Erickson Murder,” SPDPP; “The Murder Case,” DEM.
46. “The Murder,” MT, 2 February 1876.
47. “The Murder,” MJ; “The Murderers,” DEM.
48. James Matson, Svea, Minn., to Warden, Minnesota State Prison, 16 June
1923.
49. “The Murderers,” DEM; “Caught at Last,” SPDPP. In the days following
Erickson’s death, a blizzard struck parts of Minnesota with low temperatures.
DEM, 29 January 1976.
50. “The Murderer,” SPDPP, 13 February 1876; “Caught at Last,” SPDPP.
51. “The Murder,” MJ; “Caught at Last,” SPDPP. Olof Ekdahl lived in Tri­poli
Township, Kandiyohi County. He was sixty-one in 1876. Minnesota State
103
Population Census Schedules, 1865-1905 (1875). Roll 10, page 674. Minne­sota
State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
52. “Swift Retribution,” DEM, 3 February 1876; “The Murder,” MJ; “Caught
at Last,” SPDPP; “The Murderers,” DEM.
53. “Th e Bloody Pair,” SPDPP.
54. “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876; “The Murderers,” DEM.
55. “The Murderers,” DEM; “Mord auf Der Ostseite,” MFP, 5 February 1876.
Deposition of Frank Johnson. In the Matter of the Application for Pardon of
Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 3.
56. Deposition of Frank Johnson. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 4-
57. MJ, 17 February 1876; MJ, 18 February 1876; MJ, 22 February 1876;
“Tire Common Pleas,” DEM, 10 March 1876; “Court of Common Pleas,” SPDPP,
11 March 1876.
58. State of Minnesota, County of Hennepin, Court of Common Pleas. The
State of Minnesota against Swan Lindquist and Frank Johnson, p. 67. Criminal
and Civil Cases, Hennepin County G overnment Center, Minneapolis.
59. Progressive Men of Minnesota: Biographical Sketches and Portraits of the
Leaders in Business, Politics, and the Professions, together with an Historical and
Descriptive Sketch of the State, ed. Marion D. Shutter and J. S. McLain (Minne­apolis:
The Minneapolis Journal, 1897), 219; The Book of Minnesotans: A Bio-ginphical
Dictionary of Leading Living Men of the State of Minnesota, ed. Albert
Nelson Marquis (Chicago: A. N. Marquis and Company, 1907), 20; Little Sketches
of Big Folks: An Alphabetical List of Representative Men of Minnesota with Bio-graphical
Sketches (St. Paul: R. L. Polk, 1907), 16. Frank Johnson was represented
by the law firm of Lochlen, McNair, and Gillilan, but little was said in the
official papers or the press about the firm’s efforts on behalf of their client. “The
Courts,” MJ, 11 March 1876.
60. State of Minnesota, County of Hennepin, Court of Common Pleas. The
State of Minnesota against Swan Lindquist and Frank Johnson, p. 67. Criminal
and Civil Cases. Hennepin County Government Center, Minneapolis. “The
Common Pleas,” DEM; “Court of Common Pleas,” SPDPP; “The Courts,” MJ.
61. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 7.
62. James W. Lawrence, late County A ttorney H ennepin County, Minn., to
Hon. J. S. Pillsbury, Gov. of Minnesota, 12 August 1880. Governors Files (2).
Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
63. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 7.
64- “The Murderers,” DEM.
65. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
104
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 6.
66. James W. Lawrence, late County Attorney Hennepin County, Minn., to
Hon. J. S. Pillsbury, Gov. of Minnesota, 12 August 1880.
67. “State Prison,” MJ, 15 April 1876.
68. Press coverage of the Erickson murder case was extensive. Both English
and foreign language presses were involved. Swedish-American papers covering
the murder included Hemlandet (Chicago), Svenska Amerikanaren (Chicago),
and Nordstjeman (New York). The present study has concentrated on coverage
from the Minneapolis and St. Paul area. Principal newspapers cited are The Daily
Evening Mail (Minneapolis), Minneapolis Journal, The Minneapolis Tribune, The
St. Paul Daily Pioneer Press, and Minneapolis Freie Presse.
69. “Murder Most Foul,” SPDPP; “Murder,” MT.
70. “Mord auf Der Ostseite,” MFR
71. “Murder Most Foul,” SPDPP.
72. “Wellson’s Murder,” DEM; “The Erickson Murder,” SPDPP; “Caught at
Last,” SPDPP; “The Bloody Pair,” SPDPP.
73. “That Horrible Murder,” SPDPP; “The Murder,” MJ.
74- “That Horrible Murder,” SPDPP; “Johnson the Murderer,” DEM, 2 Feb-ruary
1876; SPDPP, 6 February 1876; “Murder!” MT; “Swift Retribution,” DEM.
75. “Caught at Last,” SPDPP.
76. “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876; “The Common Pleas,” DEM.
77. “The Common Pleas,” DEM; “The Courts,” DEM, 11 March 1876.
78. “Caught at Last,” SPDPP; “The Murder,” MT, 4 February 1876.
79. “The Murderer,” SPDPP.
80. “The Murderers,” DEM; “The Bloody Pair,” SPDPP.
81. “Court of Common Pleas,” SPDPP.
82. “The Murder,” MT, 30 January 1876.
83. “The Erickson Murder,” SPDPP.
84. “The Common Pleas,” DEM.
85. “The Courts,” MJ, 11 March 1876, 4 April 1876.
86. SPDPP, 6 February 1876.
87. “The Erickson Murder,” SPDPP.
88. Carl-Martin Bergstrand, Frillesåsmärket och Albert Sandklef eller Sandklef
och Gällingemärket (The Frillesås scar and Albert Sandklef or Sandklef and the
Galling scar) (Göteborg: Gumperts förlag, 1950), 41.
89. Ibid., 40. For detailed information on knife fighting customs in south­western
Sweden in the nineteenth century, see the companion volumes: Carl-
Martin Bergstrand, Frillesåsmärket och Albert Sandklef eller Saridldef och Gällingemärket
(n. 88) and Carl-Martin Bergstrand, Albert Sandklef och Frillesåsmärket (Albert
Sandklef and the Frillesås scar) (Göteborg: Gumperts förlag, 1953).
90. For this information, many thanks to Professor Bengt af Klintberg, of
105
Lidingö, Sweden, in a personal communication to the author, 27 December
2007.
91. MJ, 2 March 1876.
92. MJ, 15 April 1876.
93. Theo. H. Laws to Mr. Henry W. Wolfer, Warden, State Penitentiary,
Stillwater Minn., 16 April 1907; and Henry Wolfer to Mr. Theo. H. Laws,
Minneapolis Tribune, 17 April 1907. Both in Frank Johnson Case File. Stillwater
State Prison Folder. Minnesota S tate Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
94. “Swift R etribution,” DEM.
95. DEM, 17 February 1876; “A Stunner,” MJ, 3 March 1876.
96. DEM, 24 February 1876.
97. “The Body Snatchers,” DEM, 16 March 1876; “The Bodies of the Dead,”
DEM, 18 March 1876; DEM, 9 March 1876.
98. DEM, 2 March 1876.
99. Warden C. S. Reed to Rev. C. E. Benson, Stillwater, Minn., 7 February
1917. Frank Johnson Case File. Stillwater State Prison Folder.
100. Deposition of Eugene A. Merrill. State of Minnesota, County of
Hennepin. In the Matter of the Application for Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 2
April 1880.
101. Warden C. S. Reed to Rev. C. E. Benson, Stillwater, Minn., 7 February
1917.
102. G. A. Newman, Prison Physician, to Warden J. J. Sullivan, Stillwater,
Minnesota, 21 May 1923. Frank Johnson Case File. Stillwater State Prison Folder.
Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
103. Frank Johnson. Inmate Register Sheets. Stillwater State Prison Folder.
Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
104. G. A. Newman, Prison Physician, to Warden C. S. Reed, 3 January
1917. G. A. Newman, Prison Physician, to Warden J. J. Sullivan, 21 May 1923.
Frank Johnson Case File.
105. Frank Johnson was a subscriber to Chicago Bladet.
106. “The Bloody Pair,” SPDPP; MJ, 18 February 1876.
107. Warden J. J. Sullivan to State Board of Control, Saint Paul, Minn., 31
May 1923; G. A. Newman, Prison Physician, to Warden J. J. Sullivan, 31 May
1923. Both in Frank Johnson Case File. The cause of Frank Johnson’s death was
given as arterio-sclerosis.
108. Ernest A. Lilja to Warden, Minn. State Prison (no date); Warden J. J.
Sullivan to Mr. Ernest A. Lilja, Mitchell, So[uth] Dakjota], 5 June 1923. Frank
Johnson Case File. Frank Johnson had $1,221.56 in his prison account. It has
proven impossible to discover how the money was used after his death.
109. James Matson, Svea, Minn., to Warden, Minnesota State Prison, 16
June 1923. Frank Johnson Case File.
106
110. Physical Condition Reports. Vol. A-C, 1875-1905. Stillwater State
Prison Folder. Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
111. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 7.
112. The depositions of the Deputy Warden, Abe Hall; the foreman of the
prison paint shop, Frank Lemon; and several prison guards all appear as part of
the file entitled In the Matter of the Application for Pardon of Swan Lindquist.
Testimonials to Swan Lindquist’s pre-prison work from former employers are in
the same file.
113. Petition for the Pardon of Swan Lindquist. To His Excellency Hon.
Lucius L. Hubbard, Governor of Minnesota, 1 September 1882. Contained in
the file entitled In the Matter of the Application for Pardon of Swan Lindquist.
114- J- S. Pillsbury, State of Minnesota, Executive Department, to Mssrs
Koon, Merrill, and Kelty, 16 May 1881. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist. For information on Swan Lindquist’s release from
prison, see Convict Record, Stillwater State Prison Folder. Minnesota State Ar­chives,
MFIS, St. Paul.
115. Deposition of Swan Lindquist. In the Matter of the Application for
Pardon of Swan Lindquist, 26 March 1880, p. 7.
116. State of Minnesota. Division of Vital Statistics. Certificate of Death
#20319.1936. Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
117. Fourteenth Census of the U nited States. 1920 Population. Sixth ward.
Enumeration District 112. Hennepin County, Minnesota. Minnesota State Ar­chives,
MHS, St. Paul.
118. History of the Police and Fire Departments of the Twin Cities: Their Origin
in Early Village Days and Progress to 1900. Historical and Biographical (Minneapo­lis/
St. Paul: American Land and Title Register Association, 1899), 270; “Will­iam
T. Hoy,” History of Minneapolis: Gateway to the North, Vol. II. (Chicago/
Minneapolis: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1923), 787. At one point Michael
Hoy himself ended up in jail. He illegally pursued a Minnesota fugitive across
the international border to Canada. Officials in Winnipeg arrested Hoy and
kept him in jail for six months.
119. Tribune’s Directory for Minneapolis and St. Anthony, 1871-72 (Minne­apolis
Tribune Co., 1871), 19; Minneapolis City Directory, 1871-1876, microfilm
204- Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul; Campbell’s Minneapolis City Di­rectory,
1877-8 (Minneapolis: W. M. Campbell, 1877), p. 95.
120. Progressive Men of Minnesota, 219; MJ, 4 May 1920, p. 17.
121. State of Minnesota. Division of Vital Statistics. Certificate of Death
#19997. 1924. Minnesota State Archives, MHS, St. Paul.
122. Minneapolis City Directory for 1880-81 (Minneapolis: Johnson and
Harrison, 1880).
107
123. For a concise study of the Church of Sweden’s role in everyday life in
southwestern Sweden during the period leading up to the time of the present
study, see: CarhMartin Bergstrand, Kulturbilder från 1700-talets Bohuslän (Cul­tural
images from eighteenth-century Bohus County) (Göteborg: Eländers
Boktryckeri AB, 1937).
124- MJ, 13 February 1876.
125. “Only a Swede Man,” DEM, 4 February 1876.
126. Minneapolis City Directory, 1871-1876, microfilm 204- Nlinnesota State
Archives, MHS, St. Paul. The Lindquist brothers and Gust Erickson all lived
within two blocks of Washington Avenue in Minneapolis during the mid-1870s.
127. Barge’s Restaurant was located at 49 South Washington Avenue in
Minneapolis. Barge’s published its daily list of dinner guests in the English lan­guage
newspapers of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
128. “The Murder,” MT, 4 February 1876.
129. “Caught at I^ast,” SPDPP; SPDPP, 9 February 1876.